Hello Iosif, Hooray, I have figured it out. It took me a few hours and more than 60 full backups, but I found the cause.
I did what you recommended. Started backing up just /home, then added a directory to that and so on. I was able to backup most of the system without showing a byte of difference. With /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, /var/log, etc. smaller differences were shown, but I expected that. These were also only differences in the range of several hundred bytes or a few kilobytes. Then in the end only a handful of directories remained, these were to blame. Here as an overview (I renamed the path names a bit to avoid drawing conclusions about my company or the software I use): /usr/projects/blah/master/ /usr/projects/blah/clients/ The master directory contains several HTML pages, PNG images and other media resources. Together about 14GB according to "du -sh --apparent-size /usr/projects/blah/master/". The clients directory has several subdirectories, one for each client of this software. The same files are in there as in the master directory. All hardlinks to files in the master directory. Some of the files contained have up to 37 hardlinks. If you now take the directories individually and add up their sizes from "du -sh --apparent-size", you get exactly the value that BackupPC v4 shows me. If, on the other hand, you calculate the size of both directories at the same time, for example because you specify the parent directory, you get the value from BackupPC v3. My understanding and conclusion is now: BackupPC v3 shows the size of the backup as it would be restored to disk. With all hardlinks intact and used. BackupPC v4, on the other hand, shows the size of the backup as if all the hardlinks had been resolved into individual standalone copies of the files. I think with this knowledge in mind, I can consider my troubleshooting to be over. Iosif, I would like to thank you and everyone else who has responded here for your efforts, time and patience. Greetings Stefan > Gesendet: Dienstag, 13. Dezember 2022 um 16:38 Uhr > Von: "Les Mikesell" <lesmikes...@gmail.com> > An: "General list for user discussion, questions and support" > <backuppc-users@lists.sourceforge.net> > Betreff: Re: [BackupPC-users] File Size Summary shows too large value for host > On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 3:29 AM Stefan Helfer <stefan...@gmx.de> wrote: > > > > Hello Iosif, > > > > Just to be sure, what do you mean by "Can you check sizes in parallel"? > > I have already looked at the two backups, from v3 and v4, and compared them. > > There are NO differences in the exports. Same size, same content, > > everything identical. > > If I start with a smaller list of files for the backup, I still see a > > difference. However, the difference becomes smaller. > > > > I thought v4 knew enough not to transfer files already in the pool > found on another host, where v3 transfers them before finding they are > duplicates and converting to hardlinks and only skips matches from a > previous backup of the same host. Maybe it is calculating sizes from > the transfers. > > -- > Les Mikesell > lesmikes...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: https://github.com/backuppc/backuppc/wiki Project: https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/
