Hi Bdale, > When creating incremental backups using snapshot filesystems, tar fails > to include files in a level 1 backup (presumably any level > 0) if they > were modified in the original filesystem between the time the snapshot > was created and the time the level 0 backup was created of the > snapshot.
Yes, it is a known fact. There is a certain lapse of time between a file is registered in the incremental snapshot and actually archived. If it changes in between, these changes are not stored in the snapshot. > I have had a look at the source, and the cause seems to be that the option > newer_mtime_option is set from the creation time of the previous incremental > archive (in incremen.c:read_incr_db_01 and incremen.c:read_incr_db_2) > While I can't think of any good reason to set this option at all, except as a > (failed) attempt to avoid unnecessary work, I cannot assess the full > impact of simply removing the code in question. The full impact of this would be rendering the incremental backup code completely inoperational and useless: tar's incremental backups are based on comparing file's mtimes with the reference timestamp stored in the snapshot file. Right now I cannot propose any immediate solution to this. Regards, Sergey
