Backups and Synchronization with CSLab

CSlab performs nightly backups of all home and work directories. The tape backups are kept for about a year. If you accidentally delete a file or need an earlier version of a file from your home directory it can be retrieved from backups, please contact your POC (Ingrid) to take care of this.

Many people also work on their home machines or laptops. Its a good idea to back these up as well. Now backing up an entire machine to your CSLab account may not be feasible, most people keep music, picture or even video file on their machines that would quickly fill up the home directory space at CSLab. However, I do urge everyone to backup their important work, such as thesis or research projects.


Samba

There are several ways to do this, the simplest is to use CSLab's Samba server. Simply mount your home directory on your machine using Samba and transfer your files. When off campus, you will need to connect to CSLab via VPN in order to use the Samba server. See bellow for specific instruction:

Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Mac OS X
Linux


Rsync

For people who prefer to use the command line, another backup option is to use rsync. Linux users will most likely already be familiar with this option, however, this will also work quite nicely from an OS X machine. The following command can be used to backup a directory (Documents/Project) from your home machine to your cslab home directory (u/username/Research/Project).

rsync -ave ssh --delete Documents/Project username@cs.toronto.edu:Research/


However, rsync can also be used to keep files on different machines synchronized. As an example, let say you're currently working on a project and all files related to that project are in a directory called project1. You have a project1 directory at cslab, but sometimes you work at home or on a laptop. Rsync can be used to copy the project1 directory and later, to keep it synchronized. The following command (run from your home machine) will copy the contents of Project1 to Documents/Project1 on your home machine:

rsync -ave ssh --delete username@cs.toronto.edu:Research/Project1 Documents

After your done your work at home, you can use rsync to update the Project1 directory back at cslab by using the following command:

rsync -ave ssh --delete Documents/Project1 username@cs.toronto.edu:Research/

By turning these lines into scripts you can easily keep the information on your home machine and cslab directory synchronized. Please contact me (Ingrid) if you would like some help setting up such scripts.