Which of the following commands will achieve the desired effect?

A systems administrator wants to back up the directory /data and all its contents to /backup/data on a remote server named remote.

Which of the following commands will achieve the desired effect?
A . scp -p /data remote:/backup/data
B . ssh -i /remote:/backup/ /data
C . rsync -a /data remote:/backup/
D . cp -r /data /remote/backup/

View Answer

Answer: C

Explanation:

The command that will back up the directory /data and all its contents to /backup/data on a remote server named remote is rsync -a /data remote:/backup/. This command uses the rsync tool, which is a remote and local file synchronization tool. It uses an algorithm to minimize the amount of data copied by only moving the portions of files that have changed. The -a option stands for archive mode, which preserves the permissions, ownership, timestamps, and symbolic links of the files. The /data argument specifies the source directory to be backed up, and the remote:/backup/ argument specifies the destination directory on the remote server. The rsync tool will create a subdirectory named data under /backup/ on the remote server, and copy all the files and subdirectories from /data on the local server.

The other options are not correct commands for backing up a directory to a remote server. The scp -p /data remote:/backup/data command will copy the /data directory as a file named data under /backup/ on the remote server, not as a subdirectory with its contents. The -p option preserves the permissions and timestamps of the file, but not the ownership or symbolic links. The ssh -i /remote:/backup/ /data command will try to use /remote:/backup/ as an identity file for SSH authentication, which is not valid. The cp -r /data /remote/backup/ command will try to copy the /data directory to a local directory named /remote/backup/, not to a remote server.

Reference: CompTIA Linux+ (XK0-005) Certification Study Guide, Chapter 18: Automating Tasks; rsync(1) – Linux manual page