Controlling rsync with Python?

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I've been wanting to write a python script that would run several instances of rsync in sequence for backing up data to a different computer.

At the moment I just have this text file with the commands I use and I've just been copy-pasting them into the terminal, and it seems kinda silly.

I want to be able to use python to do this for me. I know very vaguely how to use subprocess.popen, but I have no clue how to get python to interact with rsync directly, like for entering my password for me. Can python do that?

Something like:

if theProccess.proccessResponse == "Password:" :
    theProccess.respond(string)

Or is the best that I can do is just have it, or even a bash script, just run the rsyncs in sequence and have to type my password in over and over again?

Thanks in advance.

rsync automation python bash
8 Answers

There's a great Python module written by Colin Stewart called RSyncBackup that's little known and little documented, but very useful.

By default, it doesn't contain any methods for including a password in your rsync commands, so I modified the module and talked about it in this blog post: http://technofart.blogspot.com/2012/02/rsync-controlled-by-python.html

A link to my modified module can be found in the Download section of my post.

A key-based solution is also a great idea. Also, many rsync implementation will look for the RSYNC_PASSWORD environment variable, which you can set. Just be careful if your environment variables are visible to other users.

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