Backup

My backup system has to be:

1. Automated. That means it runs regularly.
2. Simple. That means I don't have to be a genius to use it.
3. Incremental. That means it uses the least amount of data to record the history.
4. Encrypted: That means other people can't see it.
5. Distributed: A single catastrophe won't wipe out my data.

I am looking at duplicity over S3: http://www.brainonfire.net/2007/08/11/remote-encrypted-backup-duplicity-amazon-s3/

rsync

This seems most useful right now.

I keep backups of my other systems in the /backups directory. This is a copy of everything except /tmp, /proc. /sys, and /usr.

# rsync -avh --delete -e ssh --exclude "/tmp,/proc,/backups,/usr" / <target host>:/backups/<src host>/

I could use the --backup option instead of the --delete option, but I don't want to.