rsnapshot is a collection of scripts for data backup.
There are several documentations for rsnapshot, for example
Apart from the typical examples and descriptions there are a few questions that are not answered so often:
How to backup directories that got spaces in their names ?
In version 1.3.0 spaces in path names are escaped with a leading backslash (\):
backup User@Host:/Folder/Subfolder\ with\ spaces/* TargetFolder/
Unfortunately this syntax does not work anymore in the newest version 1.3.1. To backup folders containing spaces in their names you have to use version 1.3.0.
When using rsnapshot to backup data on a WAN (Wide-Area-Network) there is a higher risk that the network connection is interrupted.
If rsync is not configured properly then interruptions are not detected properly and the backup process will hang and stop working. This can be solved by adding the parameter timeout to rsync_long_args, for example:
rsync_long_args --timeout=600 --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded
Detecting network errors is not the final solution. The backup-process will be ended, but the backup is not executed any more.
From version 1.3.1 on there is a new parameter rsync_numtries. This parameter describes, how often rsnapshot will try to execute the backup. The value should be at least 3:
rsync_numtries 4
So, for backing up folder containing spaces in their names you need version 1.3.0 / to make more than one attempt for backup you need version 1.3.1. What to do, if you want to deal wit both issues ?
I have changed the script from version 1.3.0, so that it includes the new parameter rsync_numtries from version 1.3.1.
The script can be downloaded here. Overwrite your existing rsnapshot with the included file. (But dont forget to backup before :-) )
rsnapshot rsync path / directory with blanks / spaces
network interrupt timeout attempts rsync_numtries
