Re: [rdiff-backup-users] State of the rdiff-backup project

[Frank Crawford]

On Sat, 2015-08-15 at 09:12 -0500, Robert Nichols wrote:
> On 08/15/2015 05:17 AM, Frank Crawford wrote:
> > However, these days, hard links are not that common, as most people
> > prefer symbolic links.
> 
> You might want to look in the directory trees under 
> /usr/share/zoneinfo
> and /var/lib/yum/yumdb and reconsider that statement. Files in that
> latter tree can have over 1000 hard links, and there are changes 
> there
> whenever you install/update/uninstall packages. rdiff-backup does a
> pretty horrible job of keeping the archive in sync with the source
> when there are changes, and regressing a backup makes it worse. I 
> have
> an very complex audit that I run after every backup to put the 
> archive
> back in sync with the source tree.

You are quiet likely right, although I doubt that you will have much
activity going on under /usr/share/zoneinfo.

However, /var/lib/yum/yumdb is a slightly different issue.  A quick
scan on my system shows that there are quiet a few hard links, but
depending on how often you do updates will affect changes there.  Also,
the size of them is usually less than a single block, so, yes, you will
chew up space but not a lot.  Personally, if I was concerned about
space, I'd be excluding /var/lib/yum/yumdb anyway, and rebuild it if
you ever do a full restore.

Regards
Frank