README
¶
rincr
Quick and easy incremental backups. A reimplementation of the ideas in rsnapshot built with the composibility and
simplicity of rsync in-mind.
Note: This software is not yet stable; there may be backwards-incompatible changes before v1. Use at your own risk.
Installation
Grab the right binary for your OS and Architecture from Github. For Linux on x86:
curl -L https://github.com/thekashifmalik/rincr/releases/latest/download/rincr-linux-amd64 > rincr
For MacOS on ARM:
curl -L https://github.com/thekashifmalik/rincr/releases/latest/download/rincr-darwin-arm64 > rincr
Make sure it is executable and then place it anywhere in your $PATH:
chmod +x rincr
mv rincr ~/bin/rincr # Use whatever location you put your user binaries in.
Test that it works:
rincr --version
About
A utility to compliment rsync for backups. While rsync can be used to make full backups, i.e exact clones of the
target data, rincr can be used to make incremental backups which consist of snapshots of the target data. These
snapshots can be taken as often as needed and they are cheap both in time and space. rincr can also manage these
snapshots, restore files to earlier versions (NOT IMPLEMENTED YET) and encrypt backups (NOT IMPLEMENTED YET).
Features
rincr is built on top of rsync and borrows heavily from rsnapshot.
Incremental
Whenever rincr is run a copy of the last backup is stored in .rincr. Backups are fully browsable.
Differential
rincr uses rsync so only the actual differences between files are sent over-the-wire.
Deduplicated
rincr uses the same hard-link mechanism that rsnapshot uses so unchanged files between snapshots do not use any
storage space.
Bidirectional
rincr can backup from (pull) or to (push) a remote location, just like rsync.
Encrypted
rincr uses rsync and ssh so all communication is encrypted. Addtionally backups can be encrypted on disk
(NOT IMPLEMENTED YET).
Quickstart
rincr supports a similar interface to rsync:
rincr [[USER@]HOST:]SRC... [[USER@]HOST:]DEST
Create an incremental backup of ~/mydata at the remote location myserver:~/backups/mydata:
rincr ~/mydata myserver:~/backups
When this command is run rincr checks to see if there are existing backups at the destination. If there are, a copy of
the latest backup is created using hard links. Then new changes (if any) are synced from the source.
If you also want to clean up older backups, pass the --prune option:
rincr --prune ~/mydata myserver:~/backups
This will apply the default retention rules and delete extra backups. Pruned backups will be printed out. The default retention rules are:
- 24 hourly backups
- 30 daily backups
- 12 monthly backups
- 10 yearly backups
Incremental backups are kept in myserver:~/backups/mydata/.rincr. They are fully browsable and take no extra space
for files that have not changed between versions. Each file acts as a full-backup and can be copied back out manually to
restore data.
We can also back up locally from remote locations:
rincr server1:~/mydata server2:~/otherdata ~/backups
This will create incremental backups in ~/backups/mydata and ~/backups/otherdata.
Demo
$ ls -A ~/mydata
README.md new-file.txt
$ ssh desktop-1 ls ~/Backups/mydata
README.md .rincr
$ ssh desktop-1 ls ~/Backups/mydata/.rincr
2024-01-12T09-12-32 last
$ rincr ~/mydata desktop-1:~/Backups
...
$ ssh desktop-1 ls ~/Backups/mydata
README.md new-file.txt .rincr
$ ssh desktop-1 ls ~/Backups/mydata/.rincr
2024-01-12T09-12-32 2024-01-23T18-26-10 last
Unimplemented
# Manual pruning
rincr prune myserver:~/backups/mydata
# Overriding default rentention
rincr --rentention 30d ~/mydata myserver:~/backups
# Restoring files
rincr restore --from 1w myserver:~/backups/mydata/file ~/mydata/file
# File encryption - supports deduplication but less secure
rincr --encrypt ~/mydata myserver:~/backups
# Folder encryption - no deduplication but completely secure
rincr --encrypt-folder ~/mydata myserver:~/backups
Directories