Re: [Duplicity-talk] old backups are not deleted

[Scott Hannahs]

> On Mar 7, 2017, at 9:56 AM, Fazekas László via Duplicity-talk 
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Thank you, I will change my scripts.
> 
>>> 
>>> 2017-03-07 14:31 keltezéssel, edgar.soldin--- via Duplicity-talk írta:
>>>> On 06.03.2017 22:46, Fazekas László via Duplicity-talk wrote:
>>>>> Hi!
>>>>> 
>>>>> I've a duplicity backup script, something like this:
>>>>> 
>>>>> ...
>>>>> duplicity --no-encryption --full-if-older-than 1W 
>>>>> /var/backups/hotcopy-dup s3://...
>>>>> ...
>>>>> duplicity remove-older-than 2M --force s3://...
>>>>> 
>>>>> The second part should delete my old backups, but it doesn't. It says:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Last full backup date: Sat Feb 25 22:17:37 2017
>>>>> There are backup set(s) at time(s):
>>>>> Mon Dec 26 23:59:29 2016
>>>>> Tue Dec 27 00:00:56 2016
>>>>> Tue Dec 27 01:17:03 2016
>>>>> Wed Dec 28 01:17:02 2016
>>>>> Wed Dec 28 17:54:00 2016
>>>>> Wed Dec 28 19:25:45 2016
>>>>> Wed Dec 28 22:17:02 2016
>>>>> Thu Dec 29 22:17:03 2016
>>>>> Fri Dec 30 22:17:02 2016
>>>>> Sat Dec 31 22:17:02 2016
>>>>> Sun Jan  1 22:17:03 2017
>>>>> Mon Jan  2 22:17:02 2017
>>>>> Tue Jan  3 22:17:03 2017
>>>>> Wed Jan  4 22:17:02 2017
>>>>> Thu Jan  5 22:17:03 2017
>>>>> Which can't be deleted because newer sets depend on them.
>>>>> No old backup sets found, nothing deleted.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Why newer sets depends on backups before 2017.02.25, which is the last 
>>>>> full backup date?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thank you.

Going back to the original question.  Why do you think there was a full backup 
on 2/25???  It seems that there were weekly full backups on 2/7, 2/14, 2/21 and 
3/1.  Not sure why you jumped a day on the last one but they look weekly and 
nothing on 2/25.  The collection status seems to show that all the older files 
are being deleted.

I think it may be that the confusion is that you use a 2M time period.  A month 
is an indistinct time unit and may be a canonical 30 days which is different 
than the actual 31 or 28 leading to one extra backup set being retained.  For a 
long as February is in the 2 month time window you may have that extra backup 
if that is a big problem, use a fixed number of weeks if you do weekly backups 
or do a fixed number of backups as suggested.  Months are just an ugly unit but 
useful for those who keep astronomical time.

-Scott