Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Verification takes too long

[Matthew Flaschen]

Fedor Piecka wrote:
> The backup of the most used
> machines (they also have the largest amount of data to backup) takes
> about 30 minutes. But after that, the verification takes about 12
> hours.
> 
> Is this normal?

Yes.  I think so.  The backup obviously only does work on changed files,
but verify reads every file in the repository in its entirety and
computes a SHA-1 hash.  This is unavoidably going to take a very long time.

Perhaps there should be an option to verify only files that have changed
during the most recent backup (--verify-last?).  The problem here is if
your backup drive goes flaky.  Then, files that /shouldn't/ have changed
on the backup drive may nonetheless be corrupted by an errant write
without verify-last noticing.

Matt Flaschen