Re: [rdiff-backup-users] multiple archive hardlink space saving?

[Billy Crook]

On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 15:17, Joshua Jensen<address@hidden> wrote:
> Are there any provisions for hard link savings for backing up many
> similar machines?
>
> I ask because I have 2000 (yes, two thousand) machines to back up.  At
> least 90% of data is the same... basic Linux filesystems, mostly / and
> /var and /usr partitions.
>
> I wonder if it would be worthwhile to add a feature to rdiff-backup
> that would look to hardlink files that different rdiff-backup archives
> have in common?
>
>
>
> Right now, the hard link savings is only per machine's, say, /usr
> partition.  Sure, the incremental backup from the same machine
> benefits from this; only any differences are recorded.
>
> But right next to that archive directory on the backup server I have a
> thousand other machines with a /usr archive that is mostly if not
> entirely identical.  Why not have the option to make rdiff-backup
> be able to use some sort of higher level "all these archives can share
> hardlinks" capability?  The space saving would be staggering for
> multihost backups.

Have you tried storebackup?
http://storebackup.org/

It at least purports to do what you're asking.  I'm investigating it
to replace rdiff-backup because several times now, my rdiff backup
destinations have become "corrupted" and no new backup sessions would
complete until I made a new destination.  This problem has not
happened with storebackup.