[rdiff-backup-users] Re: Age old problem, how to 'archive' old data out of backups?

[Chris G]

On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 07:08:28PM -0700, James Downs wrote:
>
> On Sep 3, 2009, at 3:14 PM, Chris G wrote:
>
>> Is there any easy/obvious way of archiving old data out of home
>> directories so that rdiff-backup backups shrink?  I suspect that there
>
> If you delete data from the source directories, and then later "-- 
> remove-older-than", old versions will get purged, including files that  
> were deleted.  At that point, you will no longer be able to recover that 
> file.
>
> Is this what you're looking for?
>
Yes, sort of, but not quite as --remove-older-than will remove
*everything* older than the given date won't it?  

Some very old stuff I want to keep but not others.

E.g. I have a ~/tmp directory which gets backup up, it would be nice
to be able to clear out ~/tmp *and* the backups of it.  I do want it
to be backed up but there's a fair chance that I don't want to keep
the backups for long.  There are other similar but less well defined
areas.

Another very obvious example is if one renames or moves a large chunk
of data.  I currently have my photographs catalogued and managed by
digikam, I'm thinking of renaming the root of my pictures now that
digikam can have multiple roots, if I do this I'll have 200Gb or so of
duplicated backup!

I want the ability to, for example, rename ~/pictures (the current
digikam tree) to, say, ~/images.  Then, once things have settled, I
want to be able to delete the backup of ~/pictures as eveything that
was there is now in ~/images.  OK, I'll lose any history but once I've
checked the new digikam tree is OK there's no history that I want or
need.

-- 
Chris Green