Backup Central

Congratulations, Ben, and welcome back.

Could I please renew my question in the posting
http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/rdiff-backup-users/2004-03/msg00010.html.

Basically I was asking whether an upgrade from 12.3 to 12.6 meant that I
had to lose access to my back archives.

Stephen Isard

S.Isard < at > ed.ac.uk
wrote the following on Sun, 7 Mar 2004 09:54:31 +0000 (GMT)

I am converting from version 0.12.3 to 0.12.6, both versions built from
tar archives with the same copy of librsync-0.9.6. The machine was
RH7.3 at the time 0.12.3 was built, but converted to RH9, kernel 2.4.20
in between. It appears that rdiff-backup file formats are not entirely
compatible between the two versions. I have done the following test:
...
Re-saved the same directory with the new version
rdiff-backup.0.12.6 tmp test
Got a warning message:
Warning: Metadata file not found.
Metadata will be read from filesystem.
...
I noticed that the time format in the data filenames has changed.
The files created by 0.12.3 end with "+01:00" for my timezone, but
0.12.6 uses "Z" (except for the error log, which still has
"+01:00"). Could the problem be something to do with this?

The file formats should be exactly the same between versions. I think
you are right, the problem may have to do with the time. Perhaps
v0.12.6 cannot find the metadata file because it is looking under the
wrong time. Without the metadata file it cannot list-changed-since,
and also warns about this when backing up.

There was a daylight savings time fix in 0.12.6, could that be the
problem? Perhaps earlier backups were listed an hour too soon. Which
suffix is right, "Z" (for UTC), or "+01:00" (for one hour ahead of
UTC)?n

All the files produced by a session should have the same time suffix.
Are you sure error_log still has "+01:00"?


--
Ben Escoto

Ben Escoto wrote:


The file formats should be exactly the same between versions. I think
you are right, the problem may have to do with the time. Perhaps
v0.12.6 cannot find the metadata file because it is looking under the
wrong time. Without the metadata file it cannot list-changed-since,
and also warns about this when backing up.


I think you have struck in the problem with windows restoring and
comparing Ben. is there a way we can make the time stamp more windows
friendly at the same time? there is a wiki question about it as well

http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/index.php/CygwinToLinux

http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/index.php/NativeWindowsPort

dave

(Sorry, Ben, I meant to post to the list, not mail to you directly.)

Ben Escoto wrote:

I noticed that the time format in the data filenames has changed.
The files created by 0.12.3 end with "+01:00" for my timezone, but
0.12.6 uses "Z" (except for the error log, which still has
"+01:00"). Could the problem be something to do with this?

There was a daylight savings time fix in 0.12.6, could that be the
problem? Perhaps earlier backups were listed an hour too soon. Which
suffix is right, "Z" (for UTC), or "+01:00" (for one hour ahead of
UTC)?

I think you are right that it is something to do with daylight savings time.
When I sent my original message I was on GMT (same as UTC, no?). So +01:00
would have been incorrect. The UK switched to summer time on 28 March, so
+01:00 should now be right. I have just redone the same test and got no error
messages at all. All the files from both 0.12.3 and 0.12.6 have +01:00
suffixes.


All the files produced by a session should have the same time suffix.
Are you sure error_log still has "+01:00"?

Yes. The two error_log files from the original test are
error_log.2004-03-06T13:26:34+01:00.data.gz
error_log.2004-03-06T13:28:37+01:00.data.gz

However, the current_mirror file (created by 0.12.6) is
current_mirror.2004-03-06T13:28:37Z.data
and all of the other data and stats files for 13:28:37 have Z as well.

Stephen Isard