Re: [rdiff-backup-users] critical unvary behaviour

[devzero]

Hi !

sad that you lost you files.

i had come across this a long time ago and that makes me always keep something 
in mind on restore: 

be careful with the options!

see 
http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/rdiff-backup-users/2006-04/msg00024.html

regards
roland


> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: "mortee" <address@hidden>
> Gesendet: 15.03.08 02:57:05
> An: address@hidden
> Betreff: [rdiff-backup-users] critical unvary behaviour


> 
> Hi,
> 
> I just had rdiff-backup erase *all* my backups. That is just plain wrong.
> 
> Let me explain. There's no mention whatsoever in the documentation about 
> the fact that when one restores over an existing directory using the 
> --force option, RDB would erase any files/directories that exist in the 
> target directory but don't exist in the backup to be restored. I think 
> this goes against the whole principle of a backup program, namely 
> deleting data without prior notice. I hold this despite the requirement 
> to use --force. One would quite reasonably assume that data covered by 
> the backup would be overwritten, and anything in excess would be left 
> alone (possibly warnings might be issued for such items).
> 
> This is especially misleading given that when the backup was created, 
> some parts of the file system were explicitely excluded - for example, 
> the whole backup were restricted to a single file system. Given this, 
> one would even more reasonably expect that when restoring from this 
> backup, paths matching this exclude pattern would be left alone by 
> default, e.g. data on a different FS volume mounted somewhere under the 
> target directory.
> 
> Finally, RDB should at least take extreme care not to overwrite or 
> delete the very backup source it is restoring from. Unfortunately, it 
> doesn't check for this - so it is possible to have it delete the backup 
> directory from under itself, and then die with a file not found exception.
> 
> My actual situation: I had my server's system HDD die on me, so I was 
> happy to have kept daily backups of it on a separate local disk. I had 
> another HDD at hand which used to be the system drive of the very same 
> server up until a few months ago (replaced because it started showing 
> signs of becoming unreliable). To have my server up temporarily until I 
> can acquire a real replacement disk, I just put that HDD in, and booted 
> from it in single user mode. I mounted the backup disk, and (yes, this 
> is arguably my fault) I haven't paid extra attention to mount it 
> read-only - I never thought in my worst dreams that a restore operation 
> on the root partition would ever erase all the valuable data on the 
> backup disk. So I just launched it targeting the root directory using 
> --force, and it happily erased anything beyond the mount point, because 
> that was (of course) excluded from the system backup. Now I'm stuck with 
> a dead system disk and an empty backup of it - 5 years worth of emails, 
> system configuration and other stuff are gone in a few minutes. Now I'm 
> not especially happy.
> 
> What I suggest is that this behaviour should at least be stressed in the 
> software's manual, so that it be obvious to anyone who cares to take a 
> look at it. Even better would be to make it an explicit option to have 
> RDB delete anything at restore time which isn't getting actually 
> overwritten from the backup - or at least provide an option to disable 
> this (which, if documented, would underline the default behaviour).
> 
> thanks for the attention
> mortee
> 
> 
> 
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> 


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