Incremental backup over FTP with rsync + curlftpfs

---

You have likely needed to perform a backup of a website at some point that you only have access to via ftp. The usual approach is to use an ftp client like filezilla or work directly in bash. The problem arises when, for example, we need to perform an incremental copy of the website and we don’t have ssh access for rsync or unison to work with. The solution is provided by curlftpfs, which allows us to mount an ftp directory on our system to treat it as if it were a local folder and perform an rsync or unison normally.

First, we install curlftpfs

$ sudo apt-get install curlftpfs

Next, we must edit our /etc/fstab with our favorite editor

$ sudo nano /etc/fstab

and we add the following line curlftpfs#_user_:_pass_@_host.com_/_ruta-carpeta-remota_ /_punto-de-montaje_/ fuse ro,user,uid=_userid_,auto 0 0

Where:

• user: is the ftp username
• pass: is the ftp access password
• host: is the ftp host
• userid: is the ID of the non-root user that we will allow to mount the folder; we can get ours using the command

$ id

In this case, I have mounted the ftp folder in read-only mode for security reasons (nobody wants to accidentally delete their website ;) ). The folder will be mounted on the next system reboot, or we can force it using

$ sudo mount -a

The next step is to perform an rsync between the mounted folder and the folder where we will store the backup, for example:

$ rsync -arzvl /punto-de-montaje/* /home/usuario/backups/mi-ftp</span>

All that’s left is to create a script and add it to our crontab so that the backup is performed automatically. Note: The speed compared to an rsync synchronization over SSH is considerably lower; therefore, this technique should be considered an alternative when we do not have the possibility of ssh access.

---