Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Case sensitivity problem

[Matthew Flaschen]

padoivi wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Seduced by the reverse diff and mirroring capabilities of
> rdiff-backup, I decided to start using it.
> 
> Everything is working fine but I get problems with files or
> directories names containing capital letters such as "Documentation"
> which names get converted into things like ";068ocumentation" (the
> worst case being with file names such as "README or INSTALL").

This is not a problem.  It will be restored exactly as it was
originally.  The FAQ explains this clearly
(http://stderr.org/doc/rdiff-backup/FAQ.html#case_insensitive).
Basically, rdiff-backup keeps the mirror "plain text" (so to speak) as
much as possible, but sometimes it needs to do escaping to faithfully
represent the source filesystem.  There are other examples of this, such
as ACLs.

Since NTFS is case-preserving but not case-sensitive, when backing up to
it, rdiff-backup /could/ (for example) backup documentation as
documentation and only resort to ;068ocumentation if there is later a
Documentation file or folder (in addition to lower-case documentation).
     However, this is a feature request not a bug.

> I am backing up from an ext3 filesystem (Linux, Ubuntu Hardy) to an
> ntfs filesystem  (external hard drive, USB 2.0 connection) which are
> both supposed to be case sensitive.
> 
> I tried the --override-chars-to-quote option (reading from various
> forum posts) but I get the following error message :

Don't do that then. :)  As documented, --override-chars-to-quote
overrides the default quoting behavior described in the FAQ and man
page.  It is /only safe/ to use the override when you are backing up to
a case-sensitive filesystem and rdiff-backup doesn't realize this (which
would be a bug in rdiff-backup).  NTFS is not case-sensitive, so
rdiff-backup is right here, and  --over

Matt Flaschen