I mis-posted, and should have replied to the list, instead of just
Daniel...so here it is...
---
I'm not sure what you're doing with your --verify... [I'm confused, I
think...]
It *sounds* like you want a full CRC style check of the *current*
files after the backup is complete. (i.e. File X gets updated today with a
delta, and you want to verify that file X is the same both on the
source and destination locations/drives after the "backup" is complete.)
If that's the case, I think you already get it. (It's "built-in" to
RDiff-backup.)
Before I type a lot of drivel, let me know if that's what you
want/intend.
--
If I understand you right, this is a very different animal than a --verify...
-Greg
Greg wrote:
I know Matt corrected this post, but I wanted to address this:
---
If you do a --verify-at-time xyz where xyz is your oldest backup, it
should verify all files in that backup - so every delta should be
applied. This should verify that all delta's (backups) are good and
functioning.
[In short, it "verifies" that for each file for which a successful
verify is returned, that the most current file, all applicable
delta's and meta-data
are good and functioning properly.]
This is what I thought. It is good to have it confirmed. Thanks.
---
However, if files were added after the initial backup, I'd guess that
a verify won't check the delta's for those files - since they don't
exist in the set at time xyz
So, while a verify to your oldest backup is good, it's not
comprehensive for all files that have deltas+meta-data.
This seems to be a weakness in the rdiff-backup verify mechanism. I
think there is general consensus here on the list that this could be
improved since what many people are looking for is a way to verify
that their backup archive (including all past revisions) is free from
corruption.
---
I'm not aware, so if I'm wrong perhaps someone could correct me, but
I'd like a command to, in essence, do a comprehensive
--verify-all-files-in-the-archive. [I'm pretty sure such a thing
doesn't exist, at least I never saw it in the docs.]
This would apply all deltas to *all* files (back to the oldest copy)
and compare the stored
hashes at the time of backup to the rebuilt file. [Note all the
files, not just those in a particular target date/delta.]
This wouldn't verify that every file would be correct in every delta
version, but it would, I think, get as close as one might come to
that.
I agree, something like this would be great. Although with the speed
issue's I'm having it may not be practical (i.e. time feasible) to
reconstruct every file this way before comparing it to a signature
hash. I would propose that rdiff-backup store some additional meta-
data which would consist of signature hashes of the delta files as
they exist on the disk after rdiff-backup is finished with a backup
(similar to what yafic does - http://www.saddi.com/software/yafic/).
This should make the verification process much faster (yafic takes
less than two hours to verify an rdiff-backup repo that takes over
eight hours to --verify-at-time on my setup). Note that it would not
replace the --verify-at-time functionality, which would still be
necessary to verify the integrity of files as they existed before the
backup. But it would provide a fast way to verify the integrity of an
rdiff-backup repository.
Then again, doing an intermediate check of the hash and file at each
delta point wouldn't take too much longer [or so I think without a
lot of time invested in pondering it] - so if this option/feature
doesn't
exist and one were to code it, it might not be much more code or
difficulty...
Ease of implementation may be an argument that favors your proposal.
My proposal adds a completely new layer of integrity checking on top
of the existing rdiff-backup functionality.
~ Daniel
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