TamWiki

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Using rsync

rsync is an extremely useful solution to backing up files to or from a remote location, provided you have ssh access to the remote machine. The rsync man page lists tons of options and examples for doing this well.

A simple example of using rsync to replicate your wiki:

This will bring over everything, including the pmwiki software and such, which you probably don't really need in a backup situation.

Inclusions and Exclusions: rsync filtering

Luckily, rsync let's you include and exclude things by using an --exclude-from parameter that you can drop file glob patterns into.

It's a bit arcane, and the man page is less than helpful, but I've come up with a set of filter rules that seem to work for backing up the important content of your wiki.

Create a file called, say, exclusions, and fill it with:

    # Exclude stuff from pmwiki except some
    + /cookbook/
    + /wiki.d/
    - /wiki.d/.flock
    - /wiki.d/.pageindex
    - /wiki.d/.lastmod
    - /wiki.d/*,del-*
    - /wiki.d/*/*,del-*
    + /pub/
    + /local/
    + /uploads/
    - /*
    - **~
    - **,v
    - **.bak
    - **.tgz
    - **.zip
    - **.gz
    - **.Z

This will allow the files matching include patters (prefix "+") and prevent the files matching exclude patterns (prefix "-") from being included in the rsync. Note well that the include patterns need to come before the exclude patterns. Here's what's going on above:

This last line here is really the key to the whole thing. If you don't have this line, you'll still get most everything in the installation. It basically says "exclude everything else from here".

What follows are more miscelaneous matching patterns for various kinds of files that may appear in the included directories up above.

(Note: you may have good reason not to exclude some of the types of files I've shown above. Feel free to modify the above list; add and subtract entries as needed.)

Once you have your exclude file set up, then run the following command:

Testing your download before doing it

Rsync has a nice parameter, --dry-run, which lets you see what it's going to do before you commit to the download. This is great for checking yout inclusions and exclusions to make sure nothing comes over that you don't want.

Further

There are many more options to rsync that can make it the ideal backup solution, including making incremental and full backups, etc.

Important to remember

Just keep in mind the 3 most important things: