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@amalmurali47
Last active October 11, 2025 10:58
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Backup DigitalOcean droplet locally

DigitalOcean does not provide a way to download a snapshot of your droplet locally. You can use rsync to accomplish this instead.

On your local machine, assuming you have added your-server in your SSH config:

rsync -aAXHv --append-verify --exclude={"/dev/*","/proc/*","/sys/*","/tmp/*","/run/*","/mnt/*","/media/*","/lost+found"} your-server:/
  • -a : archive mode (all files, with permissions, etc.)
  • -A : preserve ACLs/permissions (not included with -a)
  • -X : preserve extended attributes (not included with -a)
  • -H : preserve hard links (not included with -a)
  • -v : verbose, mention files
  • --append-verify: if the files differ in modification or other timestamps, it will overwrite the target with the source without scrutinizing those files further
@builder-main
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builder-main commented Oct 11, 2025

Thanks for the command. Baffled they didn't put an option to do this from their own API. Looks like a weird political/commercial stance.

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