HowtoMonster

Have you ever wanted to know how to easily synchronize the data between multiple servers automatically?
In this article I’ll explain how to setup 2 Linux servers to automatically synchronize data between a specific directory on each server. To do this we will use rsync, ssh key authentication, and a cron job.

Let’s call the 2 servers ‘SOURCESERVER’ and ‘DESTSERVER’ for
SOURCESERVER = Source server (the server we’re connecting from to upload the data)
DESTSERVER = Destination server (the server we’re connecting to receive the data)

Part 1 - Setting up SSH key authentication

First, we need to make sure the DESTSERVER has the ability to use key authentication enabled. Find your sshd configuration file (usually ‘/etc/ssh/sshd_config’) and enable the following options if they are not already set.

RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys
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