On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 11:11 AM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com> wrote:

by compress I thought they meant zip. so there is no way to zip it?

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Brian Cluff <brian@snaptek.com> wrote:
The --compress-level=5 option is for compressing the data over a network. I would hope that rsync is smart enough to not actually compress the data internally when the data is staying local to the machine, but if it's not, telling it to compress will just eat up a bunch of your CPU to accomplish nothing.

rsync does indeed have an exclude option that looks like:

--exclude 'string*'

If you want the data compressed but still want to use rsync on it, you will probably need to look into using a filesystem that will automatically compress your data. Then you can just use the same command to backup your data and the compression will be done transparently.

Try looking into formatting your drive with something like the BTRFS filesystem that supports transparent compression.

Brian Cluff

On 09/23/2015 06:49 AM, Michael Havens wrote:

It seems that the compress doesn't work.

size of Documents folder:
bmike1@c521 ~ $ du -hs Documents/
which lists the size of 19G

bmike1@c521 /media/bmike1/USB DISK $ du -hs ./
20G./

--compress-level=5 made it bigger!

Or else do I also need to include '-z' as well?

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 9:29 AM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com
<mailto:bmike1@gmail.com>> wrote:

got it to backup. But still, please answer my question about the
'exclude' option and how much I can compress it. I got it to backup
by erasing the .Trash folder. Why don't pendrives make the space
available after you delete a file?

rsync -auWq --progress --delete --compress-level=5
/home/bmike1/Documents /media/bmike1/"USB DISK"/
rsync: rename "/media/bmike1/USB DISK/Documents/.forwardspamto
.elhlC4" -> "Documents/forwardspamto ": Invalid argument (22)
rsync: mkstemp "/media/bmike1/USB
DISK/Documents/Business/Receipts/lazycash/.index.html?a_aid=509c458b25b79.sGaqe4"
failed: Invalid argument (22)

rsync: mkstemp "/media/bmike1/USB
DISK/Documents/ComputerInstructions/.ForgotPassword?.xVeqCC" failed:
Invalid argument (22)
rsync: mkstemp "/media/bmike1/USB
DISK/Documents/Education/.Screenshot-LFS101x.2 Progress | edX -
Google Chrome.png.eyN1PK" failed: Invalid argument (22)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous
errors) (code 23) at main.c(1183) [sender=3.1.0]

On Wed, Sep 23, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com
<mailto:bmike1@gmail.com>> wrote:

I keep running out of space on the flash drive. How tightly can
I compress it?
Could I get it to not copy files like so: --exclude=string* so
that it would exclude all files string<and whatever else comes
after string>
????????????????????????

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 12:48 PM, Michael Havens
<bmike1@gmail.com <mailto:bmike1@gmail.com>> wrote:

thanks!

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 12:40 PM, Brian Cluff
<brian@snaptek.com <mailto:brian@snaptek.com>> wrote:

Use --delete if you want the destination to have any
files that have been deleted from the source to also
deleted in the destination.

The -q option just suppresses any output that isn't an
error, I tend to leave it off do that I can see what
file it's currently working on. You can add or remove
it as needed.

Brian Cluff

On 09/21/2015 03:42 AM, Michael Havens wrote:

what about the -q option and the --delete option? i
noticed that you
didn't use them in your command 'rsync -auW
/sort/directory
/dest/directory/'.

On Sun, Sep 20, 2015 at 10:34 PM, Brian Cluff
<brian@snaptek.com <mailto:brian@snaptek.com>
<mailto:brian@snaptek.com

<mailto:brian@snaptek.com>>> wrote:

If you are backing up locally you will want to
do things a little
different size as:

rsync -auW /sort/directory /dest/directory/

You will want to skip the -z option and the
corresponding
--compress-level option. Since you are doing
copying everything
locally that will only cause the machine to
compress and immediately
decompress every file that is copied wasting a
ton of CPU/power.

The other thing you will want to do is use the
-W flag, that tells
the machine to copy whole files instead of
looking for what has
changed between the documents. That way it can
look at the time
and/or size and if it's changed it will just
copy the whole file.
Without that flag it would read through both
the source and
destination file and then just copy the
differences by writing a
whole new file, so with the -W (whole file)
flag the machine just
reads/writes the file once and is a lot more
efficient/faster.

This can also be a good flag to set on fast
networks since it can be
a lot faster just to re-copy the whole file
than it is to have the
hard drive reading the file multiple times.

The progress flag is very nice, but unless you
are planning on
closely monitoring your copy, I would skip it
as I've found that it
tends to slow down the transfer... or at least
make it feel that
way, like a watched pot never boils :)

On your slash at end end question. A slash at
the end tends to mean
that you want to put the source files/dirs into
that directory and a
destination without a slash usually means that
you want to rename
your source file/directory to that destination
file/dir name.

Lastly the -h option gives you the sizes in
easily readable terms or
in other words, instead of just giving you the
size in bytes it will
give you size that look like 100K 2.4M 1.8G

Brian Cluff

On 09/20/2015 05:34 AM, Michael Havens wrote:

I know how to use rsync (sorta) to backup a
disk and go between
remote
machines. With my current incarnation of
the os I'm not so
worried about
backing up the whole system as I am a
directory (and all of the
directories under it) nor copying between
remote machines. The
directory
is the 'Documents' directory. Would I:

rsync -aquz --compress-level=5
/home/bmike1/Documents
/media/bmike1/USB
DISK/
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