this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
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You might not even like rsync. Yeah it's old. Yeah it's slow. But if you're working with Linux you're going to need to know it.

In this video I walk through my favorite everyday flags for rsync.

Support the channel:
https://patreon.com/VeronicaExplains
https://ko-fi.com/VeronicaExplains
https://thestopbits.bandcamp.com/

Here's a companion blog post, where I cover a bit more detail: https://vkc.sh/everyday-rsync

Also, @BreadOnPenguins made an awesome rsync video and you should check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eifQI5uD6VQ

Lastly, I left out all of the ssh setup stuff because I made a video about that and the blog post goes into a smidge more detail. If you want to see a video covering the basics of using SSH, I made one a few years ago and it's still pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FKsdbjzBcc

Chapters:
1:18 Invoking rsync
4:05 The --delete flag for rsync
5:30 Compression flag: -z
6:02 Using tmux and rsync together
6:30 but Veronica... why not use (insert shiny object here)

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[–] tal@olio.cafe 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Because every “file” in the snapshot is either a file or a hard link to an identical version of that file in another snapshot.) So this can be a problem if you store many snapshots of many files.

I think that you may be thinking of rsnapshot rather than rdiff-backup which has that behavior; both use rsync.

But I'm not sure why you'd be concerned about this behavior.

Are you worried about inode exhaustion on the destination filesystem?

[–] koala@programming.dev 2 points 1 hour ago

Huh, I think you're right.

Before discovering ZFS, my previous backup solution was rdiff-backup. I have memories of it being problematic for me, but I may be wrong in my remembering of why it caused problems.