On 10/08/2016 10:23 AM, Wayne Sallee wrote:
I created a new linux opperating system. While I used the same user name, the
number is different,
so I copied my stuff over to the new system, and chowned the files over.
No problem there.
But now I need to get back to doing the rdiff-backups to the external hard
drive.
Should I chown the external drive so that the files mach, then continue as
usual?
Or is it not that simple? :-)
I'm trying to avoid a lengthy backup session on the new system, and avoid
excessive backup files,
and make easy retrieval should I need an older file.
The problem with that is that the ownership of the files in the mirror
will no longer agree with the numeric ownership recorded in the
rdiff-backup-data metadata files. That shouldn't be a big deal, since
rdiff-backup will default to using the user name when setting the
ownership on restored files. The big problem will be that every file
with a changed ID will be seen as having changed the next time you do a
backup. That is going to result in a very long backup session and the
creation of a huge number of tiny zero-diff files.
It would be a lot cleaner to chown (and chgrp) the files in the new
Linux system and adjust the numeric IDs in /etc/passwd and /etc/group to
match the old system.