Ubuntu system backup and restore with rsync

Ubuntu system backup and restore with rsync

From time to time, you may come to a situation of trying to backup the entire system. While searching for an easiest way to do this, I found an easiest solution in Arch Linux wiki. I never thought that it was going to be that much simple. I copied my entire root (/) tree incrementally with Rsync using a single line command everytime I want to backup my system. While there there so many tools to backup your systems, I find this method super easy and convenient, at least to me. Also, this method is way better than disk cloning with dd command. Because It doesn’t matter if your hard drive is different size, or use different filesystem. This method will work on almost all Linux systems that have rsync installed.

Ubuntu Backup

sudo su

rsync -aHAXvP --delete --delete-excluded --exclude=/swapfile --exclude=/dev/* --exclude=/proc/* --exclude=/sys/* --exclude=/tmp/* --exclude=/run/* --exclude=/mnt/* --exclude=/boot/* --exclude=/media/* --exclude=/lost+found --exclude=/home/kongxl/.cache/* --exclude=/home/kongxl/VirtualBox_VMs/* --exclude=/home/kongxl/Downloads/* /* /media/kongxl/SSD1_SYSTEM_BACK/PC_BACKUP

Ubuntu Restore

sudo su

rsync -aHAXvP /media/kongxl/SSD1_SYSTEM_BACK/PC_BACKUP/* /

VirtualBox Backup

sudo su

rsync -aHAXvP /home/kongxl/VirtualBox_VMs/* /media/kongxl/SSD1_SYSTEM_BACK/PC_VM_BACKUP/

VirtualBox Restore

sudo su

rsync -aHAXvP /media/kongxl/SSD1_SYSTEM_BACK/PC_VM_BACKUP/* /home/kongxl/VirtualBox_VMs/

rsync usage

rsync is a file transfer program capable of efficient remote update
via a fast differencing algorithm.

Usage: rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... DEST
or   rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST:DEST
or   rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... [USER@]HOST::DEST
or   rsync [OPTION]... SRC [SRC]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
or   rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST:SRC [DEST]
or   rsync [OPTION]... [USER@]HOST::SRC [DEST]
or   rsync [OPTION]... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC [DEST]
The ':' usages connect via remote shell, while '::' & 'rsync://' usages connect
to an rsync daemon, and require SRC or DEST to start with a module name.

Options
-v, --verbose               increase verbosity
    --info=FLAGS            fine-grained informational verbosity
    --debug=FLAGS           fine-grained debug verbosity
    --msgs2stderr           special output handling for debugging
-q, --quiet                 suppress non-error messages
    --no-motd               suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see manpage caveat)
-c, --checksum              skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
-a, --archive               archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
    --no-OPTION             turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
-r, --recursive             recurse into directories
-R, --relative              use relative path names
    --no-implied-dirs       don't send implied dirs with --relative
-b, --backup                make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
    --backup-dir=DIR        make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
    --suffix=SUFFIX         set backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
-u, --update                skip files that are newer on the receiver
    --inplace               update destination files in-place (SEE MAN PAGE)
    --append                append data onto shorter files
    --append-verify         like --append, but with old data in file checksum
-d, --dirs                  transfer directories without recursing
-l, --links                 copy symlinks as symlinks
-L, --copy-links            transform symlink into referent file/dir
    --copy-unsafe-links     only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
    --safe-links            ignore symlinks that point outside the source tree
    --munge-links           munge symlinks to make them safer (but unusable)
-k, --copy-dirlinks         transform symlink to a dir into referent dir
-K, --keep-dirlinks         treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
-H, --hard-links            preserve hard links
-p, --perms                 preserve permissions
-E, --executability         preserve the file's executability
    --chmod=CHMOD           affect file and/or directory permissions
-A, --acls                  preserve ACLs (implies --perms)
-X, --xattrs                preserve extended attributes
-o, --owner                 preserve owner (super-user only)
-g, --group                 preserve group
    --devices               preserve device files (super-user only)
    --copy-devices          copy device contents as regular file
    --specials              preserve special files
-D                          same as --devices --specials
-t, --times                 preserve modification times
-O, --omit-dir-times        omit directories from --times
-J, --omit-link-times       omit symlinks from --times
    --super                 receiver attempts super-user activities
    --fake-super            store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
-S, --sparse                handle sparse files efficiently
    --preallocate           allocate dest files before writing them
-n, --dry-run               perform a trial run with no changes made
-W, --whole-file            copy files whole (without delta-xfer algorithm)
-x, --one-file-system       don't cross filesystem boundaries
-B, --block-size=SIZE       force a fixed checksum block-size
-e, --rsh=COMMAND           specify the remote shell to use
    --rsync-path=PROGRAM    specify the rsync to run on the remote machine
    --existing              skip creating new files on receiver
    --ignore-existing       skip updating files that already exist on receiver
    --remove-source-files   sender removes synchronized files (non-dirs)
    --del                   an alias for --delete-during
    --delete                delete extraneous files from destination dirs
    --delete-before         receiver deletes before transfer, not during
    --delete-during         receiver deletes during the transfer
    --delete-delay          find deletions during, delete after
    --delete-after          receiver deletes after transfer, not during
    --delete-excluded       also delete excluded files from destination dirs
    --ignore-missing-args   ignore missing source args without error
    --delete-missing-args   delete missing source args from destination
    --ignore-errors         delete even if there are I/O errors
    --force                 force deletion of directories even if not empty
    --max-delete=NUM        don't delete more than NUM files
    --max-size=SIZE         don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
    --min-size=SIZE         don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
    --partial               keep partially transferred files
    --partial-dir=DIR       put a partially transferred file into DIR
    --delay-updates         put all updated files into place at transfer's end
-m, --prune-empty-dirs      prune empty directory chains from the file-list
    --numeric-ids           don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
    --usermap=STRING        custom username mapping
    --groupmap=STRING       custom groupname mapping
    --chown=USER:GROUP      simple username/groupname mapping
    --timeout=SECONDS       set I/O timeout in seconds
    --contimeout=SECONDS    set daemon connection timeout in seconds
-I, --ignore-times          don't skip files that match in size and mod-time
-M, --remote-option=OPTION  send OPTION to the remote side only
    --size-only             skip files that match in size
    --modify-window=NUM     compare mod-times with reduced accuracy
-T, --temp-dir=DIR          create temporary files in directory DIR
-y, --fuzzy                 find similar file for basis if no dest file
    --compare-dest=DIR      also compare destination files relative to DIR
    --copy-dest=DIR         ... and include copies of unchanged files
    --link-dest=DIR         hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
-z, --compress              compress file data during the transfer
    --compress-level=NUM    explicitly set compression level
    --skip-compress=LIST    skip compressing files with a suffix in LIST
-C, --cvs-exclude           auto-ignore files the same way CVS does
-f, --filter=RULE           add a file-filtering RULE
-F                          same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
                            repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
    --exclude=PATTERN       exclude files matching PATTERN
    --exclude-from=FILE     read exclude patterns from FILE
    --include=PATTERN       don't exclude files matching PATTERN
    --include-from=FILE     read include patterns from FILE
    --files-from=FILE       read list of source-file names from FILE
-0, --from0                 all *-from/filter files are delimited by 0s
-s, --protect-args          no space-splitting; only wildcard special-chars
    --address=ADDRESS       bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
    --port=PORT             specify double-colon alternate port number
    --sockopts=OPTIONS      specify custom TCP options
    --blocking-io           use blocking I/O for the remote shell
    --stats                 give some file-transfer stats
-8, --8-bit-output          leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
-h, --human-readable        output numbers in a human-readable format
    --progress              show progress during transfer
-P                          same as --partial --progress
-i, --itemize-changes       output a change-summary for all updates
    --out-format=FORMAT     output updates using the specified FORMAT
    --log-file=FILE         log what we're doing to the specified FILE
    --log-file-format=FMT   log updates using the specified FMT
    --password-file=FILE    read daemon-access password from FILE
    --list-only             list the files instead of copying them
    --bwlimit=RATE          limit socket I/O bandwidth
    --stop-at=y-m-dTh:m     Stop rsync at year-month-dayThour:minute
    --time-limit=MINS       Stop rsync after MINS minutes have elapsed
    --outbuf=N|L|B          set output buffering to None, Line, or Block
    --write-batch=FILE      write a batched update to FILE
    --only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating destination
    --read-batch=FILE       read a batched update from FILE
    --protocol=NUM          force an older protocol version to be used
    --iconv=CONVERT_SPEC    request charset conversion of filenames
    --checksum-seed=NUM     set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
    --noatime               do not alter atime when opening source files
-4, --ipv4                  prefer IPv4
-6, --ipv6                  prefer IPv6
    --version               print version number
(-h) --help                  show this help (-h is --help only if used alone)