Using Openrsync

OpenRsync is OpenBSD's rewrite of rsync. openrsync is designed to be lightweight and simple. It may, however, be a little buggy.

WARNING: If your filesystem is being actively written to, data corruption may occur.

OpenRsync Primer

To back up the file /path/to/file on example.com with username to the current directory:

$ openrsync -a username@example.com:/path/to/file ./

This table explains the most common options:

Option	Purpose
a	(a)rchive mode, shorthand for Dgloprt
D	Transfers (D)evice and special files
g	Sets (g)roup to match the source
l	Transfers symbolic (l)inks
o	Sets (o)wner to match the source (needs root)
p	Synchronizes (p)ermissions
r	(r)ecursive
t	Synchronize (t)imestamps
v	Increase (v)erbosity

If the server does not have rsync but instead uses openrsync, you will want to add the option --rsync-path=openrsync:

$ openrsync -a --rsync-path=openrsync username@example.com:/path/to/file ./

If you have multiple files, you can use the shorthand of :/path/to/second/file:

$ openrsync -a --rsync-path=openrsync username@example.com:/path/to/file :/path/to/second/file ./

This copies both /path/to/file and /path/to/second/file from example.com to your current local directory.

openrsync can also copy folders recursively. To see each file copied, turn on verbosity with -v. In the next example, we copy from /path/to/folder on the local system to /path/to/destination in example.com:

$ openrsync -av --rsync-path=openrsync /path/to/folder username@example.com:/path/to/destination/

Quick Check

Before you backup your files, make sure you have enough disk space. To see how much space it will take, and how much you have available, run:

$ df -h
Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/sd0a     1005M    111M    844M    12%    /
/dev/sd0k      192G   28.7G    153G    16%    /home
/dev/sd0d      3.9G   22.1M    3.7G     1%    /tmp
/dev/sd0f     12.3G    7.3G    4.4G    63%    /usr
/dev/sd0e     14.7G   41.2M   14.0G     0%    /var

Backing up /home will require at least 28.7G of space.

$ openrsync -av --rsync-path=openrsync username@example.com:/home/username /dest/path/

This will copy everything in /home/username on example.com into /dest/path/.