Use a Virtualmin Virtual Server as an Rsync destination

Howdy -- yeah, enabling SSH on an account and then using rsync over SSH would be a good way of handling that.

Yeah, rsync does need to have a destination directory specified.

It doesn't have knowledge of Virtualmin, or of your multi-user setup -- rsync simply copies files from one location to another.

You're saying you have multiple Virtual Machines there -- meaning that you have multiple Linux servers you're trying to backup with rsync? If that's the case, that sounds like you have multiple rsync commands you'd need to be using, meaning you could change the backup destination within each script.

Well, there isn't a way to do what you're describing in Virtualmin.

Whatever it is you're looking to do there with rsync, it would need to be setup manually, outside of Virtualmin.

If you're looking to allow Virtual Server owners to use additional space for backups -- there is a built-in backup feature that would allow them to generate backups, and even send them to remote locations.

However, that feature wouldn't use rsync, it would use the standard Virtualmin backup procedure. The benefit to that though is that users would have an easy time restoring their backups if they ever need to.

I re-read some of your previous comments, and I just realized this here is the issue:

Ok so I have installed Rsync on our Virtualmin server, however when configuring it it needs me to specify a backup directory.

You shouldn't have to specify any backup directory when installing rsync on the server.

Rsync is just a command line tool.

You just need to ensure that the command "/usr/bin/rsync" exists.

If so, any user with rsync installed remotely, such as those PC's in your office, can specify any backup directory they want when using rsync.

Each desktop can have a different backup directory, or could even have multiple backup directories if they want.

I'm not sure which rsync package is causing the confusion, but I'm wondering if maybe the rsync daemon was installed?

You don't need an rsync daemon (and I would recommend against it's use) -- you can use rsync over SSH, which would be secure, and allows you to access the SSH accounts on your server.

You don't have to remove the rsync server, but you don't need to use it for this purpose, either.

On the client system, do the following:

$ rsync -avz -e ssh /path/to/backup user@servername:/home/user/backup-dir/

If you setup an authorized_keys file on the server with a public key generated for this purpose (a regular ol' ssh key pair), you won't even need to use passwords, and it can run fully unattended.

Another option (of many): Pydio (one of the script installers) has a sync daemon for Windows and Mac OS X that'll handle this kind of task and provides a web interface on the server for browsing files. It's kinda like Dropbox. I'm pretty sure it uses an rsync style algorithm (maybe even librsync itself) to do the syncing of files.

Hi!

I am using a tool to backup the data on my computer - BackInTime (in Ubuntu). It is based on rsync and it allows me to send my backups to a remote destination via SSH.

I have a VPS with Virtualmin, but I am a newbie in using it.

Would it be possible to teach me how to set up the SSH destination on my VPS? What will be the host, the username, how can I setup the SSH key? Where will the destination directory be on the Virtualmin server?

Please forgive me if these questions are too basic... But I wasn't able to find what I need anywhere on the web.

Thank you!

Howdy alien -- we can certainly lend a hand, though as it appears you're using Virtualmin GPL there, could you start a new thread about that in the Forums? We'd be happy to follow up with you over there to help get that all setup.