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.