[Techtalk] rsync backup script

[Akkana Peck]

Carla Schroder writes:
> Does anyone have a really really cool rsync script they'd like to share? All I 
> know is script 'rsync -a  -e ssh sourc dest' and slap it into cron.

Related: does anyone use rsync for bidirectional copies?

I use rsync to back up my web site to several redundant machines.
I consider the live version on the web server to be the "master
copy", so periodically from my desktop or laptop I do:
 rsync -avv webserver:/path/to/website/ /path/to/backup/website/
(-e ssh is implied by the environment variable RSYNC_RSH=ssh).

But I also like to be able to edit pages with mozilla locally,
or move local images into position in my local copy, then syncronize
them back up to the server:
 rsync -avv /path/to/backup/website/ webserver:/path/to/website/

The problem is that somehow this confuses rsync's notion of dates,
so frequently I'll change a couple files on the server then rsync
down to the desktop, and it seems to be copying everything all over
again.  At least, the feedback given with -vv doesn't give me the
usual "(up to date)" and it pauses for a while on big files.

Everybody else I ask who uses rsync regularly seems to use it
unidirectionally: only to back up machine1 to machine2, never to
go back from machine2 to machine1.  Is rsync the wrong tool for
syncing directories in both directions?

	...Akkana