[rdiff-backup-users] Re: Windows Vista - infinite recursion problem

[Oliver Mulatz]

Hello Stephen,

> I am trying to use rdiff-backup to backup my Windows Vista machine,
> however, I keep getting stuck with Vista's infinitely recursed
> directories.. rdiff-backup keeps digging down levels and it could be
> left forever and never get anywhere.
>
> For example, I am getting stuck within:
> C:\Users\All Users\Application Data\Application Data\Application
> Data\Application Data\........

this is strange, on my Windows boxes I do not have this link to itself,
can you simply delete it, so no other actions are required?

> It is worth nothing that the 'All Users' directory is not accessible
> via normal methods.
>
> The command I am using to run rdiff is:
>
> C:\rdiff-backup>rdiff-backup.exe --exclude-symbolic-links 
> --exclude-special-files \
>  -v5 --no-hard-links  C:/Users/ ./zoot
>
> Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated :)

If you cannot delete the link, you could use '--exclude' or
'--exclude-filelist[-stdin]' to stop this infinite recursion.

> Essentially I am after a simple way to do incremental backups of my
> Vista box, and rdiff works great for my linux machines... if there is
> a better solution for Vista, I would love to hear about it :)

There is none ;-) (with the capabilities of storing an arbitrary number of 
previous
versions in a space-efficient manner) AFAICT.

You could use Cygwin to run it via cron/anacron to automate this further and to 
closely
emulate Linux behaviour, including using shell-scripts, all common 
Unix-commands,...

HTH
Cheers, Oliver