rdiff-backup - Backup program to use deltas for history

rdiff-backup is a script that backs up one directory to another. The target directory ends up a copy of the source directory, but extra reverse diffs are stored in a special subdirectory of that target directory, so you can still recover files lost some time ago. The idea is to combine the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup. rdiff-backup also preserves subdirectories, symlinks, special files, permissions, uid/gid ownership (if it is running as root), and modification times. Finally, rdiff-backup can operate in a bandwidth efficient manner over a pipe, like rsync. Thus you can use rdiff-backup and ssh to securely back a hard drive up to a remote location, and only the differences will be transmitted.

Anonymous suggestion:

hi, I looked at dirvish, when searching a backup solution for myself, but chose rdiff-backup instead. It also uses rsync for copying AFAIK and rdiff for the incremental backups. One can restore any snapshot and easily tell, for how long they should be kept (deleting an old increment means that the diffs are applied). Of course, it can use ssh to do it remotely, but rdiff-backup must be installed on both sides with not too different versions.

More information on this package can be found on the Debian web site.
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