Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Incremental restoration

[SiegeLordEx]

On 09/17/2014 09:57 AM, Dominic Raferd wrote:
> I can't see how to do what you want except the slow way, but I also
> don't understand what you are trying to achieve, or why you want to
> restore past increments.

I've been using rdiff-backup for years, and across several reinstalls. 
Occasionally I don't restore everything from the backup when I do a 
reinstall, since I, at the time, I think some directory/files are 
unnecessary. However, I also realize that I might think otherwise in the 
future, so I prefer for those deleted files (which remain in the backup) 
to survive the transition between backup systems. Perhaps this is an 
unorthodox use of the backup concept?

> As far as I can see attic (if that is your preferred choice) doesn't
> keep prior versions of backed-up files (or deleted files).

attic, from what I can tell after using it a bit, does not assume any 
sort of temporal ordering between different archives (i.e. different 
invocations of its backup command). So backing up the same directory at 
two time points is identical to backing up two directories at different 
locations with similar files. To the extent that it can restore both 
archives, it therefore keeps the 'prior' versions of files (where the 
notion of prior is determined solely by the user). The reason why I'd 
want to restore in place with rdiff-backup is that hopefully attic's 
cache system won't have to rescan the files, and not to try to convince 
it of some temporal ordering between two archives.

Anyway, I managed to do some hardware shufflings and brought down the 
rdiff-backup's checkout time to just 1 hour, which is sufficiently fast 
for now.

Thanks!

-SL