Selfhosted

I tried to use it via tailscale but it disconnects very easily - is to be expected?

Because it's not shiny and new? I think the simple stuff works great with the shiny stuff. Command line tools are great for weaving in NTFY pings to our fancy pocket communicators with all kinds of information.

Rsync depends on OpenSSH, but it definitely isn't SFTP. I've tried using it against an SFTPGo instance, and lost some files because it runs its own binary, bypassing SFTPGo's permission checks. Instead, I've opted for rclone with the SFTP backend, which does everything rsync do and is very well compliant.

In fact, while SFTPGo's main developer published a fix for this bug, he also expressed intention to drop support for the command entirely. I think I'm just commenting to give a heads up for any passerby.

I use cp and an external hdd for backups

Y’all don’t seem to know about rsbackup, which is a terrible shame for you.

If you want rsync but shiny, check out rshiny

Here’s how I approach old and slow:

1. Older software is mature and battle tested. It’s been around long enough that the developers should know what they’re doing, and have built a strong community for help and support.
2. Slow is okay when it comes to accuracy. Would I love to back up my gigabytes (peanuts compared to some of you folks out there with data centers in your attics) in seconds? Yes. But more importantly, I’d rather have my data be valid for if I ever need to do any kind of restore. And I’ve been around the block enough times in my career to see many useless backups.

But if you're working with Linux you're going to need to know it.

Nope. I never have needed to know it. I only ever used it because I was either curious to know how to use it or because it was more convenient than other solutions. But scp is basically just as convenient.