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Is it OK to use cp -a and tar -czf commands to backup my nginx and letsecnrypt folders?

October 22, 2016 324 views
Backups Ubuntu 16.04

Since i have 70 websites on my droplet I want to copy my nginx and letsencrypt folders then compress them and lastly send them to S3.

Im thinking of using the cp -a command which they tell me preserves symlinks and pretty much everything within the folder structure (permissions for example).

After that i would like to use the tar -czf command to compress the folder before sending it to S3

Is this a sane way of doing this?

Also, a different question: what is the advantage of using rsync intead of cp -a i mean cp -a it's pretty straight forward. Why would i want to use rsync in this case? (to backup the whole letsencrypt folder for example) .

Thanks in advanced!

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1 Answer
ryanpq MOD November 2, 2016

I believe that this should work properly but would recommend using rsync if possible. The primary difference is that when transfering a tarball you are sending everything, each time. If you use the cp command and then rsync that directory it will only transfer files that have changed since the last sync, saving time, resources and bandwdith. it's less of an issue with a few config files but in general a good practice.

Let us know how you end up crafting your solution

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