Linode suggests using rdiff-backup with SSHFS for remote backups in order to get around the rdiff-backup version compatibility issue. This seems to be horribly inefficient.

One of the features of rsync (and rdiff-backup by extension) is that the remote process identifies and transmits only the change deltas thereby saving a huge amount of bandwidth and time.

By using the SSHFS filesystem it would move the change delta processing to the local system and every file would have to be read in full 'over the wire' every time.

Am I missing an important concept?

Using Rdiff-backup with SSHFS
http://library.linode.com/networking/rdiff-backup-sshfs

In the case where you have the same version of rdiff-backup on source and destination, I would certainly not use sshfs, and would instead just use rdiff-backup in the normal way.

In the case where you don't, I would certainly not use rdiff-backup, and would instead use duplicity. But some people probably want to use rdiff-backup, and for them, there's that.

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