Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Problem with first backup

[Steven Willoughby]

Giorgio wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have to perform a backup over the Internet, using rdiff-backup. The 
> scenario is as follows:
> - Backup activities can only run at night, when no one is using the files.
> - The connection is ADSL, so it is pretty slow.
> - The turnover size is around 100 MB per day, so this makes it sound ok 
> even with a slow connection.
>
> The big problem is how to do the initial copy, as the data size involved 
> is ~30 GB, and I do not have the possibility to copy the data through a 
> physical medium.
>
> Hence, I have thought about using rsync to copy a chunk of data every 
> night, until I get the whole 30 GB on the other side, and then I can 
> start using rdiff-backup.
>
> Does this sound doable? Will rdiff-backup be able to start from an 
> existing copy of the data? 

Yes, you will just need to add --force to the first run of rdiff-backup. 
 If the ADSL connection is flaky (mine changes the ip address 
frequently) then you can additionally use an openvpn connection to 
smooth out the connection wrinkles.  (I think you need the --ping and 
--ping-restart options on the openvpn client side and would probably 
want to assign a static ip on the openvpn server side.)

> Probably I won't be able preserve file 
> permissions/properties during the rsync part, will rdiff-backup be able 
> to add them afterwards?

Yes, I have verified that it does this at least with rdiff-backup 1.2.7 [1].

Steven

[1]: The following steps seem to confirm that permissions are stored:

mkdir /tmp/a
cd /tmp
touch a/A
touch a/Ab
chmod a+x a/A
sudo chown mail a/A
cp -r a b
chmod 600 b/*
rdiff-backup --force a b
zless b/rdiff-backup-data/mirror_metadata*