Re: [rdiff-backup-users] How to cope with missing 'rdiff-backup-data' in destination directory

[R. Diez]

Hallo Dominic:

Some time ago I posted this question:

https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/rdiff-backup-users/2016-01/msg00006.html

And your answer was:

> If you do as it suggests and run rdiff-backup with --force option, it 
> should complete successfully and convert the destination directory in 
> an rdiff-backup repository.

Like I said, I found what the problem in my script was:

> Ah, now I understand. My script was doing a first sweep with "--force",
> but also with "--remove-older-than", which of course will fail in
> this scenario. I wrote the thing some time ago. Thanks for your help.

However, I have just realised that "--force" is not a "complete" 
solution, because it does not actually regenerate the metadata inside 
the 'rdiff-backup-data'. I noticed because my script does a verification 
step at the end, which then issues the following warnings:

rdiff-backup --verify --no-acls "dest"
Warning: Cannot find SHA1 digest for file file1.txt,
perhaps because this feature was added in v1.1.1
Warning: Cannot find SHA1 digest for file file2.txt,
perhaps because this feature was added in v1.1.1
Every file verified successfully.

As mentioned, I am taking over a previous rsync backup with a huge 
number of files, and there are too many warnings like that. Copying all 
files again from an external, very slow USB drive would take many hours.

Is there a way to regenerate the SHA1 digests for all files in the 
destination directory?

Regards,
  rdiez