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Eric Beversluis
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 Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 6:48 pm Post subject: --include-symbolic-links |
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I just discovered that I wasn't backing up the material outside my home
directory to which I have symbolic links in the home directory (eg,
my /srv/www directory). Apparently what I took for backups of this
material was the backup disk using the link back to the originals on my
HDD.
I thought using the option "--include-symbolic-links" would solve this
problem, but it seems to result in the same behavior: When I open the
backup on a different computer, it tells me the links are broken.
(This is the command I used:
rdiff-backup --include-symbolic-links
--exclude /home/eric/.evolution/cache/tmp /home/eric /media/disk/Home-backup)
What exactly does the "--include-symbolic-links" do? The man page is
profoundly uninformative: "Include all symbolic links." Rdiff-backup
already includes the symbolic links in the backup, without using this
option--and links to the originals when clicked in the backup. If the
option doesn't do something different--viz., follow the symbolic link
and back up the linked material as well, why have it?
I believe I can't create a hard link to /srv/www because my home
directory is in a different partition.
Thanks.
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Billy Crook
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| Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 9:45 am Post subject: --include-symbolic-links |
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On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 21:46, Eric Beversluis
<ebever < at > researchintegration.org> wrote:
| Quote: | I believe I can't create a hard link to /srv/www because my home
directory is in a different partition.
|
You can't create a hard link to /srv/www because /srv/www is a
directory (and also because its on another fs). Try --including the
symlink you want to follow (recurse into).
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R. David Murray
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| Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 2:31 pm Post subject: --include-symbolic-links |
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A quick look at the code reveals that --include-symbolic-links is just
the mirror option to --exclude-symbolic-links, and is just part of the
include/exclude file selection machinery. That is, you can choose to
never back up symlink files by using --exclude-symbolic-links. Why you
would ever want to use --include-symbolic-links is a good question,
since they will be picked up just like normal files in a regular include.
There doesn't appear to be a mechanism to request that rdiff-backup
_follow_ symbolic links. I believe that to back up the linked directories
you will have to include them using their real path name. But the symlink
is still going to point to the original filesystem. In other words,
rdiff-backup is doing a literal copy of the symlink, so that if copied
back it will still be pointing to where it was originally pointing.
The symlink itself is the data being backed up when it is encountered.
--David
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Eric Beversluis
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| Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 4:25 pm Post subject: --include-symbolic-links |
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Yeah--that makes sense. Fortunately I figured this out (by checking my
backup on a different box) before I had a catastrophe.
So I switched my backup command to:
rdiff-backup --exclude /home/eric/.evolution/cache/tmp
--include /home/eric --include /srv/www --exclude
'**' / /media/disk/Home-backup
Since this was just adding 300-some KB to my backup (size of /srv/www)
and I had done the /home/eric backup just a day or so back, I assumed
the backup would go very quickly. In fact it ended up taking just over
an hour.
The only reason I can guess that it took so long was that with the new
command there had to be a whole lot of re-indexing or such? Hopefully
future incremental backups will go more quickly.
Thanks.
On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 18:30 -0400, R. David Murray wrote:
| Quote: | A quick look at the code reveals that --include-symbolic-links is just
the mirror option to --exclude-symbolic-links, and is just part of the
include/exclude file selection machinery. That is, you can choose to
never back up symlink files by using --exclude-symbolic-links. Why you
would ever want to use --include-symbolic-links is a good question,
since they will be picked up just like normal files in a regular include.
There doesn't appear to be a mechanism to request that rdiff-backup
_follow_ symbolic links. I believe that to back up the linked directories
you will have to include them using their real path name. But the symlink
is still going to point to the original filesystem. In other words,
rdiff-backup is doing a literal copy of the symlink, so that if copied
back it will still be pointing to where it was originally pointing.
The symlink itself is the data being backed up when it is encountered.
--David
|
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