Hi all,

I am trying to use rsync to mirror a web site between 2 servers. It works great so far.

I use the following command to mirror the web site.

rsync -e ssh -avz --delete user@host:/sourcedir /densir

It asks me the remote server password every time.

Does anybody know how can I rsync without manually enter remote server password? Becasue I want to rsync through crontab. Crontab won't let you manually enter remote server password.

Thanks for any help.

Use the wget tool ;)

wget --recursive http://www.website.com

or

wget --recursive ftp://ftp.website.com

Hope that helps :)

you enter the password into a password file (just a text file with the password on the first line) and then you add the password file switch the the rsync command. i forgot what the switch is but you can get it by typing "man rsync" into the console.

Since you're using SSH, you might be able to use authorisation keys.

on the source box you are using rsync setup the user to have a ssh key , then on the target box create the same user and add the key to authorized_keys

this is a pretty secure method..

As two members have mentioned above, using authorisation keys will allow you to access the remote server without a password. Take a look at the instructions to set this up... "How to Use SSH Without a Password (http://www.cvm.uiuc.edu/~ms-drake/linux/ssh_nopw.html)".

Alan

This works [admin0 recommended!]


Backup Server:

$ su -
# ssh-keygen -t dsa
ENTER <for path>
ENTER <for blank password>

This will create
~root/.ssh/id.dsa
~root/.ssh/id.dsa.pub

# scp ~root/.ssh/id_dsa.pub clientA:~root/.ssh/authorized_keys2
< enter root password for clientA >

# ssh-agent sh -c 'ssh-add < /dev/null && bash'

Test Success:
# ssh clientA -- no password needed !!! instant access !!
Logout, since we plan to run rsync.

rsync -avz -e ssh root@clientA:/ /backup/clientA/ >> log.clientA 2>&1 -- this will backup the whole system! -- see below for site


for making things easy, create a backup.sh file.



---------------

#!/bin/sh
rsync -avz -e ssh root@clientA:/path/to/website /backup/path/to/backupsite/ >> log.clientA 2>&1

---------------




and in crontab, run as

* * root /path/backup.sh

or via console, path/backup.sh &




email success to: success@admin0.com

:homer:

Hi admin0, really really thanks a lot. It works great. Now I can easy mirror 2 servers. :D

:beer:

:homer:

By the way, if you use a blank passphrase when generating the private/public key using ssh-keygen, you don't need to deal with / use ssh-agent.

:beer:

Does it work if you have MySQL database?

Yes, i think so.

Change the /sourcedir to your mysql directory and it will work too.

But there are also other scripts which can backup mysql. Like this:

http://web.abumami.com/

for mysql you should check out mysql web site. there are different ways to backup and replicate mysql database data between multiple servers :)

http://www.mysql.com