🗃️Transfer & sync files in a directory to remote node using crontab & rsync

1. openssh server

2. rsync

3. crontab

for testing type

rsync -av -e ssh /backupsource/ root@destinationip:/backupdestination/

you need to provide remote server credentials, if this is working you can automate this using a bash file and add it to crontab, create script and type below code.

backup.sh

!#/bin/bash
/usr/bin/rsync -av -e ssh /backupsource/ root@destinationip:/backupdestination/

I have placed above script in /root/backup.sh, you can make it executable using

chmod +x /root/backup.sh

now create ssh key using this command from source node.

ssh-keygen

once it is created, use this command to push key to destination node.

scp -r /root/.ssh/id_rsa.pub root@destinationip:/root/.ssh/authorized_keys

for security in type these commands in destination node.

mkdir /root/.ssh 
chmod 700 /root/.ssh/ 
chmod 600 /root/.ssh/authorized_keys 

now edit crontab in first node

crontab -e

this is open crontab in default editor, eg nano or vi. now type the

* * * * * bash /script/backup.sh

minute hour day week dayofweek, in crontab, 1 digit means minite, second is hour, third, is week and 5th is day of week. 

by now it will start working, if you want to see the cron logs, you can check using

tail -f /var/log/cron