How To Install fssync on Debian 10
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install fssync on Debian 10.
What is fssync
fssync is:
fssync is a 1-way file-synchronization tool that tracks inodes and maintains a local database of files that are on the remote side, making it able to:
- handle efficiently a huge number of dirs/files
- detect renames/moves and hard-links
It aims at minimizing network traffic and synchronizing every detail of a file system:
- all types of inode: file, dir, block/character/fifo, socket, symlink
- preserve hard links
- modification time, ownership/permission/ACL, extended attributes
- sparse files
Other features:
- it can be configured to exclude files from synchronization
- fssync can be interrupted and resumed at any time, making it tolerant to random failures (e.g. network error)
- algorithm to synchronize file content is designed to handle big files like VM images efficiently, by updating fixed-size modified blocks in-place
Main usage of fssync is to prevent data loss in case of hardware failure, where RAID1 is not possible (e.g. in laptops).
On Btrfs file systems, fssync is an useful alternative to btrfs send (and
receive) commands, thanks to filtering capabilities. This can be combined
with Btrfs snapshotting at destination side for a full backup solution.
There are three methods to install fssync on Debian 10. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.
Install fssync Using apt-get
Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.
sudo apt-get update
After updating apt database, We can install fssync using apt-get by running the following command:
sudo apt-get -y install fssync
Install fssync Using apt
Update apt database with apt using the following command.
sudo apt update
After updating apt database, We can install fssync using apt by running the following command:
sudo apt -y install fssync
Install fssync Using aptitude
If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.
sudo aptitude update
After updating apt database, We can install fssync using aptitude by running the following command:
sudo aptitude -y install fssync
How To Uninstall fssync on Debian 10
To uninstall only the fssync package we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get remove fssync
Uninstall fssync And Its Dependencies
To uninstall fssync and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 10, we can use the command below:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove fssync
Remove fssync Configurations and Data
To remove fssync configuration and data from Debian 10 we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y purge fssync
Remove fssync configuration, data, and all of its dependencies
We can use the following command to remove fssync configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:
sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge fssync
Dependencies
fssync have the following dependencies:
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install fssync package on Debian 10 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.