Backup Central

I agree that makes sense in terms of the question in the body of your
posting. But the subject of your posting was a slightly different
question: 'What happens if you add a --exclude to an existing rdiff-backup?'

If a week ago you added --exclude /home/fred to your rdiff-backup line
backing up /home, will /home/fred now be removed from the destination by
a "--remove-older-than 5D" run?

In other words, if you add exclusion criteria to an existing
rdiff-backup run, are the copies of the newly-excluded files removed
from the main repository and placed in the increments folder [in which
case they *would* be removed by a subsequent --remove-older-than
command], or are they just left where they were [in which case they
*wouldn't* be]?

I don't know the answer, but if someone does I would be interested.

Dominic

On 07/01/11 21:31, Chris G wrote:
On Fri, Jan 07, 2011 at 02:38:45PM -0500, covici < at > ccs.covici.com wrote:
When the files are deleted, they are copied to the increments folder and
kept till they are removed by --remove-older-than.

That makes sense, thank you.

Chris G<cl < at > isbd.net> wrote:

If you delete files/directories from the 'source' of an rdiff-backup
will they get removed from the destination with an appropriate
"--remove-older-than" run?

For example if rdiff-backup has been backing up a hierarchy with a
directory called 'tmp' for a while and then the 'tmp' directory is
removed can one get rdiff-backup to remove the 'tmp' backups 7 days
later by "--remove-older-than 7D".

From the man page it sounds as if deleted files *will* be removed:-

Note that snapshots of deleted files are covered by this opera-
tion. Thus if you deleted a file two weeks ago, backed up imme-
diately afterwards, and then ran rdiff-backup with --remove-
older-than 10D today, no trace of that file would remain.
Finally, file selection options such as --include and --exclude
don't affect --remove-older-than.

But this bit from the examples section of the documentation worries me
slightly:-

Note that an existing file which hasn't changed for a year will still be
preserved. But a file which was deleted 15 days ago cannot be restored
after this command is run.

--
Chris Green

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--
Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is:
How do
you spend it?

John Covici
covici < at > ccs.covici.com

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On Sat, Jan 08, 2011 at 08:39:15AM +0000, Dominic Raferd wrote:
I agree that makes sense in terms of the question in the body of
your posting. But the subject of your posting was a slightly
different question: 'What happens if you add a --exclude to an
existing rdiff-backup?'

Oops, I meant to change that, I haven't added an exclude to the
rdiff-backup command. What I have is an rsync across to the backup
machine and then the rdiff-backup runs there. I though I had a --exclude
in the rdiff-backup run but it's actually in the rsync. I only noticed
this when I started composing the E-Mail and, as I said, forgot to
change the subject.


If a week ago you added --exclude /home/fred to your rdiff-backup
line backing up /home, will /home/fred now be removed from the
destination by a "--remove-older-than 5D" run?

In other words, if you add exclusion criteria to an existing
rdiff-backup run, are the copies of the newly-excluded files removed
from the main repository and placed in the increments folder [in
which case they *would* be removed by a subsequent
--remove-older-than command], or are they just left where they were
[in which case they *wouldn't* be]?

I don't know the answer, but if someone does I would be interested.

Yes, it's the question I originally *thought* I needed to ask.

--
Chris Green

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rdiff-backup-users mailing list at rdiff-backup-users < at > nongnu.org
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Wiki URL: http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/index.php/RdiffBackupWiki

Thanks David, that is helpful.

It would be good if there was a way of removing a subset of data from
the entire repository. So let's say I put a 500GB folder in /home by
accident and it has gone into the repository and is bloating it. I can
exclude it from my future rdiff-backup runs but the folder will still be
held as snapshot[s]. If I run --remove-older-than it will remove all
data older than whenever, but I want to keep all the other stuff and
just remove this folder (and its contents).

Quite a common scenario but rdiff-backup can't handle it (AFAIK) and I
don't know of a reliable workaround (apart from: get a bigger disk for
the repository).

Dominic

On 08/01/11 10:15, D. Kriesel wrote:
Hi, according to rdiff-backups doc, excluded files are just treated as if they would not exist. This means that a snapshot of such a file will be created in the metadata once a backup run with the exclusion is performed, and the file will be deleted from the mirror data.llyu

Cheers, david



"Dominic Raferd"<dominic < at > timedicer.co.uk> schrieb:

I agree that makes sense in terms of the question in the body of your
posting. But the subject of your posting was a slightly different
question: 'What happens if you add a --exclude to an existing
rdiff-backup?'

If a week ago you added --exclude /home/fred to your rdiff-backup line

backing up /home, will /home/fred now be removed from the destination
by
a "--remove-older-than 5D" run?

In other words, if you add exclusion criteria to an existing
rdiff-backup run, are the copies of the newly-excluded files removed
from the main repository and placed in the increments folder [in which
case they *would* be removed by a subsequent --remove-older-than
command], or are they just left where they were [in which case they
*wouldn't* be]?

I don't know the answer, but if someone does I would be interested.

Dominic

On 07/01/11 21:31, Chris G wrote:
On Fri, Jan 07, 2011 at 02:38:45PM -0500, covici < at > ccs.covici.com
wrote:
When the files are deleted, they are copied to the increments folder
and
kept till they are removed by --remove-older-than.

That makes sense, thank you.

Chris G<cl < at > isbd.net> wrote:

If you delete files/directories from the 'source' of an
rdiff-backup
will they get removed from the destination with an appropriate
"--remove-older-than" run?

For example if rdiff-backup has been backing up a hierarchy with a
directory called 'tmp' for a while and then the 'tmp' directory is
removed can one get rdiff-backup to remove the 'tmp' backups 7 days
later by "--remove-older-than 7D".

From the man page it sounds as if deleted files *will* be
removed:-
Note that snapshots of deleted files are covered by
this opera-
tion. Thus if you deleted a file two weeks ago,
backed up imme-
diately afterwards, and then ran rdiff-backup
with --remove-
older-than 10D today, no trace of that file
would remain.
Finally, file selection options such as --include
and --exclude
don't affect --remove-older-than.

But this bit from the examples section of the documentation worries
me
slightly:-

Note that an existing file which hasn't changed for a year
will still be
preserved. But a file which was deleted 15 days ago cannot be
restored
after this command is run.

--
Chris Green



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rdiff-backup-users mailing list at rdiff-backup-users < at > nongnu.org
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/rdiff-backup-users
Wiki URL: http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/index.php/RdiffBackupWiki