Re: [rdiff-backup-users] other thoughts and questions

[Ben Escoto]

>>>>> "AB" == Andrew K Bressen <address@hidden>
>>>>> wrote the following on Sat, 28 Jun 2003 15:13:11 -0400

  AB> 1) I do sometimes still get the AF_UNIX socket path too long
  AB> errors; I think it happens when I backup a socket for the first
  AB> time. I'm running 0.11.4 on both sides, debian linux, 2.4.20
  AB> kernel, ext2 filesystem.

Does it crash the rest of the backup?  What's supposed to happen is
that the socket just gets skipped.

  AB> 2) the man page notes that the windows option excludes device
  AB> files. does this mean that one could not currently use a windows
  AB> box as a backup server for a unix/linux system and expect to be
  AB> able to backup and then restore /dev? (not that I want to, just
  AB> curious).

The current man page doesn't say that they are excluded, just that
they (along with hard links and ownership) are not preserved on the
destination side.  0.11.1 and later store metadata (including device
major/minor numbers) in a separate file.  So you should be able to
backup /dev with no problem.

  AB> 3) a dry-run option, noting what the program would do, without
  AB> actually changing any files on disk, would be nice.

Yep, this has been requested before.  It's actually on my todo list
marked for version 1.1, whatever that means :-)

  AB> 4) is there a way to tell how much space a given increment
  AB> takes?  It'd be nice to be able to manage backups by how much
  AB> space I have for increments instead of by time.

Not really.  If you know the time string
(e.g. 1969-12-31T18:46:40-07:00) of the session you can add up the
sizes of those files.  I was hoping to come up with some cheeky
solution using 'find' and 'du' but this doesn't appear to be
possible.

Besides, it would be nice to have maybe a three column format, showing
the mirror and the increments, and how much space each took up,
separately and cumulatively.

  AB> 5) I assume rdiff-backup stores an mv of a file as a delete and
  AB> a create?

Right.

  AB> 5A) is there a way to remove one file from all increments?
  AB> (application: I mv/gzip/etc a really big file. I want to avoid
  AB> having umpteen versions of that one file eating backup server
  AB> space, but I still want to be able to go back in time for other
  AB> files).

Not really.  If you are careful you could erase it manually.  But this
type of operation has gotten more dangerous/harder to do correctly now
that metadata is stored separately.  If you know in advance that
something is going to get moved you could --exclude it.  In my case I
have a tmp directory that is always excluded that I put stuff that
isn't very important and is just passing through.


-- 
Ben Escoto

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