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cytopia
Asked: 2017-02-27 07:46:38 +0800 CST

rsync - only keep 10 backup folders

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TL;DR

Only keep latest 10 backup folders via rsync

I am using rsync to backup my files onto a remote server OR another directory on the same machine as such:

SRC="${1}"
DEST="${2}"
PREFIX="$( date '+%Y-%m-%d__%H_%M_%S' )"

rsync --archive \
    --progress \
    --compress \
    --delete \
    --delete-excluded \
    --link-dest=../current \
    --delay-updates \
    --partial-dir=".partial-${PREFIX}" \
    "${SRC}" "${DEST}/${PREFIX}"

With this I will have the following directory structure after a few backups

$ ls ${DEST}/
2017-02-26__16_36_19/
2017-02-26__16_41_23/
2017-02-26__16_41_24/
2017-02-26__16_41_25/
current -> 2017-02-26__16_41_25/

current always points to the latest backup that has been done.

Now as I don't know if $DEST is either a local folder OR a remote server address, I would like to use rsync to always delete all other folders inside $DEST which are not the latest 10. So basically I just want to keep the latest 10 backup folders and remove the rest.

Is this somehow possible even though I don't know if the rsync script is triggered for a directory on the same machine or an ssh server address?

rsync

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    rsync has not such option ("delete all dirs older than..."), you had to achieve the same effect by using ssh and a custom script.

    Even better, you can use rsnapshot to manage backup rotation and retention.

    • 3