[CS-FSLUG] Rsync and backup

[Ed Hurst]

Needing help with rsync for a USB stick mirror of my documents:

I do most of my work on the big home desktop machine. From time to time,
I go places where I know I'll have some down time and take my laptop to
keep up with research and writing. Not wishing to crowd the harddrive of
the laptop with a mirror my $HOME from the desktop, I decided to create
a backup on a USB stick.

After reformatting it to ext2 (for simplicity's sake), I found a nifty
script using rsync to create the mirror on my stick:

   http://www.linux.com/feature/121604

It took a little tweaking, but I managed it. However, I am a long way
from expertise with rsync. After my first attempt to dig into it, I
found myself lost on some jargon. I'd like to ask the list if anyone can
simplify things for me.

On the laptop, I'll mount the stick and work with files directly there.
Once I have added or modified those files, how would I go about rsyncing
back to the source on my desktop machine? Consider I do, indeed, have an
exclude list to avoid pulling in browser cache, a folder of disk ISOs on
my desktop, and similar stuff useless on my laptop.

-- 
Ed Hurst
------------
Associate Editor, Open for Business: http://ofb.biz/
Applied Bible - http://ed.asisaid.com/index.html
Kiln of the Soul - http://soulkiln.blogspot.com/