I’ve set up Lightroom on my laptop as the repository of the pictures I’m taking on the trip. Getting the photos into Lightroom is easy, but I want to replicate everything to my server at home for backup purposes.
I have one machine at home with its SSH port exposed to the Internet; it’s not the machine I want to send the files to. So I need to use an SSH tunnel to get to the actual target machine (I’m using rsync to do the copy to avoid sending more data than I need, especially when connected over my phone).
I have set up both machines at home to trust my SSH key, so passwords and passing certificates aren’t a problem. I’ve defined home in my local .ssh/config file to point to my gateway system’s SSH port, so I can set up the tunnel by opening a terminal window and issuing this command:
ssh -NL 9091:office:22 home
9091 is an arbitrary port number; it can be anything more than 1024.
office is the system I want to connect to at home; I could also use the local network address at home (for example, 192.168.99.99).
Now I’m ready to do the copying; I need to open another terminal window and issue this command:
rsync -auv -e "ssh -p 9091" \
--exclude '*Previews*' --exclude '*ackup*' \
~/Pictures/Lightroom david@localhost:Desktop/East
The Desktop/East directory on my home server is an image of the Lightroom directory here (including the catalog). If I were really brave, I could add --delete to the command to ensure that any deletions I make on the laptop are reflected at home.
After the copy is complete, I can go back to the first window and stop the SSH session.
When I get home, I plan to import the catalog from my laptop into my master Lightroom library, but if something happens to my laptop on the way home, I should be able to use the backup I’m creating.
I hope.