rsnapshot or similar tool for no added size differential backup

Question

I've currently got a backup that backs up all my files to an external hard drive, but currently I am traveling and I want to backup file changes, but without having to duplicate all the files, or create a git repo that would be the size of my existing files in deltas.

So what I want to do is backup my entire home folder to /srv using hard links (so no extra size) then use rsnapshot to make differential backups of my home folder, so only the file changes will be different.

Is this possible using rsnapshot? Is there another tool that would work better? I want to store incremental/differential backups of only file changes on the same hard drive.

I guess this would be considered less backup, more version control. Maybe something like zfs?

I'm running debian.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm not totally clear on what you want, and given the date you asked you probably already figured out a solution, but I'll take a stab at it anyway.

It seems like you want to be able to restore files to any given point in time. A local git repository would probably be sufficient, especially if your files are mostly text files.

Another thing you could consider is snapshots. If you are currently using LVM, you can use snapshots via LVM and not worry about reformatting to zfs. Of course, if you already have btrfs or zfs, they natively support snapshots. You could write a small script to automatically make hourly snapshots if that's what you're looking for. Depending on how you do your external hard drive backup, however, these snapshots may not be moved to the external hard drive, so some reconfiguration may be needed.

Finally, if you wanted to use rsnapshot, you could, but it sounds like perhaps a local git repository would work best. Often it is easier to provide a suggestion if you describe what you want to accomplish (i.e. I want to be able to change files, but revert changes I made to a previous point of time selectively, and use the minimal amount of disk space possible) rather than list possible solutions.