[rdiff-backup-users] handling of files missing in rdiff-backup repository

[devzero]

Hello !

i needed to remove some really large files from the rdiff-backup repository 
(ran into diskspace problems) , and this made my last backup run fail 
completely. i hoped rdiff-backup would only complain when trying to restore, 
but it complained while doing the backup.

after failing, i did "rdiff-backup --check-destination-dir ./rdiff-backup-repo" 
 and rdiff-backup behaved quite nicely and fixed the problem - reporting this 
in easy understandable message:

>A regular file was indicated by the metadata, but could not be
>constructed from existing increments because last increment had type
>None.  Instead of the actual file's data, an empty length file will be
>created.  This error is probably caused by data loss in the
>rdiff-backup destination directory, or a bug in rdiff-backup
>Warning: Could not restore file 
>srv/www/web4/html/video/roni_size&cypress_hill-child_of_the_wild_west.mpg!

great feature - but - i would like to discuss, what can be done to be able to 
remove files from the backup-repository _without_ the risk of inconsistencies 
like this, (needing "--check-destination-dir" after the next backup failing).

what about adding a command to remove files with additional adjustment of the 
metadata ?

i tested the following:
remove some file and ran "--check-destination-dir" afterwards, but this time, 
rdiff-backup was telling "Fatal Error: Destination dir /backup/rdiff-repo does 
not need checking"

regards
roland


ps:
ok, this is not a real issue because we should never do such ugly file deletion 
in the repository, but iirc, several users have requested "remove files from 
repository" as a feature.

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