Question : rsync questions

I have never used rsync and have some questions.

I have ssh access to a server (password login no keys) with a ton of storage on it.

I have a load of data on my local fedora 11 machine.

I want to use rsync to synchronize the files in a couple different folders with folders on the server and I would like to run this every night as a cron job. Here are my questions:

1) Can this be done with cron since I am not using keys, maybe through a credentials file of some sort?

2) The server I have access to runs SSH on a non-standard port, will this be a problem?

3) Will these daily backups be incremental?

4) Do I need any special software running on the server? (including rsync?  Its installed but I dont know if they have a daemon running)

5) Can someone tell me or point me to some good information on how to set this up?

Thanks!

Answer : rsync questions

1) If you have ssh access, you can set up keys pretty easily.  No, you can't use a credentials file, but you may be able to pipe the password through, perhaps using expect.  All of the methods are harder than keys, so is it absolutely essential it is passwords?

2) No problem, the -e parameter can be used like this: -e 'ssh -p 2222'

3) rsync by default will only update modified files (by date and/or size)

4) rsync needs to be installed, but does not need to be running as a daemon

5) It depends on the detail of what you want to do - it can be as simple as:

rsync -r -e 'ssh -p 2222'  <local files> <username>@<remotehost>:<destination path>