On Wed, Feb 15, 2006 at 10:45:50AM -0800, Justin Best wrote: > > I was wondering if its possible to let backuppc make the full backups by > > combining the last full backup and an incremental backup? The data is > > there after all. > > As far as I'm aware, this is the default behavior. If you look at one of the > incremental backups through the web interface, it will appear 'filled', so > where data was skipped in an incremental backup, it will show up as if it > were backed up anyhow. Because, as you said, the data IS there. > > However, there are a couple of caveats with incremental backups. Mainly, > because the incremental determination is simply comparing 'modified' times > on the files themselves, it's somewhat risky to assume that an 'incremental' > backup will ALWAYS get you EVERYTHING you want. Thus, it's important to > occasionally do a full backup as well. > > Of course, I'd recommend that you read the documentation for BackupPC on > this topic yourself. It's possible that I'm misinterpreting and that the > above information isn't quite correct.
You're misinterpreting the question. He wants backuppc to make a new "full" by making what other backup software calls a "synthetic" full backup. This would be the basis for the next set of incrementals. I too would like this feature, since some clients I would like to back up are teleworkers with limited upstream bandwidth. Whatever risk exists of losing something due to the incremental algorithm would still be there. I believe that this risk is minimal or nonexistent, at least with unix oses, but YMMV and I can't really speak to the risks with windows. Some filesystems or unix variants might support not updating file modification times in the filesystem, but I've never run into one. An option for what he's looking for would be to do a real rsync of the full filesystem, rather than using rsync only as the transport mechanism for backuppc. I don't know how well it could be integrated with backuppc. Maybe do a restore to a staging disk, rsync the backup client vs. the restore, then push the updated local copy into backuppc as the next full. danno -- dan pritts - systems administrator - internet2 734/352-4953 office 734/834-7224 mobile ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid=103432&bid=230486&dat=121642 _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
