Using rsync with Dreamhost’s private backup

Dreamhost has been offering their users 50GB of private backup space for a couple months now. That’s awesome. Unfortunately, they restrict your backup user’s shell using rssh to only be able to access it in four ways: rsync, scp, sftp and ftp. This means a couple things:

• You can’t setup RSA or DSA keys to enable passwordless login.
• You can’t log in via SSH
• The regular rsync -e option won’t work, because SSH is disabled.

rsync is a much better option than scp, sftp or ftp because it can do incremental changes. So, use this command to rsync to your Dreamhost private backup account.

I’m going to write a script to automate this, perhaps using expect or something similar. When I do, I’ll post it on here. In the meantime, check this out: Scripting with lftp in active mode.

 

Posted on Dec 04, 2008 - 07:46 PM

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Comments:

Hi I’m trying to automate a backup to the private backup server as well. I know this is a old post but did you ever get the script that automates the process together?

By David Thomson on Nov 19, 2009 - 05:08 AM

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Comments:

Hi David,

I never did write that script. I ended up moving all my stuff off Dreamhost a month or two later, and haven’t though much about it since. Sorry. :-(

By .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on Nov 20, 2009 - 04:40 AM

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