[Disclaimer: I'm the main author of rdup]

So you want to make backups, but all the programs you find are to
complicated and even then don't allow you to make compressed, encrypted
and remote backup? Then you might want to try rdup.

The goal of rdup is to provide some simple utilities to make a backup. 
It's designed to be run from CRON. Also it is not an imaging backup
program; its main concern is backing up personal data.

In this short guide I will tell what you need to do to get a backup
running:
* Installing rdup
* Configuration 
* Compressed backup
* Remote backup
* Extra features
* More information

I will not detail how rdup works or how the backup is done in a
technical sense, see rdup's documentation for that. This guide
is just to get people going with making backups.

* Installation:

libglib2.0-0
libfile-copy-recursive-perl

Download rdup from
<my url>

$ dpkg -i <deb>
or use gdebi

* Configuration:

This is easy part. What do you want to backup and where do you
want to store the backup? Its best to keep backups on a different
partition or better yet on a different harddisk altogether.

** Making a backup

rdup-simple ~ /backup/$HOSTNAME

Will store you homedirectory in /backup/$HOSTNAME/YYYYMM/DD. So
for today and my host this will be: /backup/elektron/200705/09
Each day will be stored in a new directory. This is done a space
efficient matter (hardlinks).

Because the files are not wrapped up in something like a tar file
you can easily restore file from your backup.

** Compressed backup
Simply add the '-z' flag to rdup-simple:

$ rdup-simple -z ~ /backup/$HOSTNAME

Will gzip you backup.

** Encrypted backup
Simply add the '-k key' flag to rdup-simple:

$ echo "my key" > key
$ rdup-simple -k key ~ /backup/$HOSTNAME

Will encrypt the backup with the key stored in the file key.

* Remote backup
Install 'rdup' on the remote host, rdup needs some of its utilities to
be available on the remote host. After you have done that:

rdup-simple ~ ssh://user@remotehost/backup/$HOSTNAME

Will store your homedirectory on 'remotehost' in the directory
/backup/$HOSTNAME/YYYYMMDD 

The compression and encryption works the same as above.

* Extra features
You simple want to exclude some directories? Simple create
a file '.nobackup' in such directories and rdup will skip
them. See the manual pages for details.

* More information
You can mail questions to rdup@miek.nl or directly to me miek@miek.nl.
More documentation can be found the manual pages of rdup and on the
website of rdup: miek.nl/projects/rdup
