I've a couple of questions on incremental backups. I've read the wiki page, and would like to confirm my understanding of some features, and also see if other features are possible that are not mentioned. I'm looking to replace my existing backup solution, and hoping to match the features I currently use, and go a little beyond.
=== Daily snapshot === So, if I understand correctly, I can make a daily snapshot of my filesystem with very little overhead. Then these can later be synced efficiently to another system (only syncing the differences), so I can backup regularly over the internet to my server, and also to an external HDD. After syncing, I can delete the snapshots (other than the trailing one needed for the next backup). In this way I can keep a constant stream of daily backups even when offline, and simply sync them next time I am online before deleting them locally. === Ignore directories === Due to storage limitations on my server, is it possible to ignore certain directories? For example, ignoring the folder that stores all my games, as this could be rather large, and the contents can easily be re-downloaded. The instructions involve subvolumes, so maybe it's possible to ignore a subvolume when syncing? If that is possible, then is it also possible to have a separate backup that does include the ignored directory? For example, having the smaller sync to the storage-limited server, but having a full sync to an external HDD. === Display backups === Is it possible to view the contents of all backups? So, the expected interface would be something like a tree of all files from across all snapshots. Any files that are not present in the latest snapshot would be greyed out to show they have been deleted. Selecting a file would show a list of versions of the file, with one version for each snapshot the file has been modified in. As long as I can get access to this information, maybe some kind of diff between snapshots, I'm willing to write the actual software to display this interface. (I suppose even if it's not supported, I could crawl through the filesystems and generate some kind of database, but that sounds like a painful process.) === Merge snapshots down === Is there some way to merge snapshots down? So, I could merge the last week of daily snapshots into a single weekly snapshot. The new snapshot should include all files across all the snapshots (even if deleted in some of the snapshots), and include just the latest version of each file. This way, I'd like to maintain daily snapshots, which can be regularly merged down into weekly snapshots, and then into monthly snapshots, and then finally into yearly snapshots. And, finally, there's no problem in deleting old snapshots? I'm assuming any data from these snapshots used by other snapshots will still be referenced by the other snapshots, and thus be retained, so nothing will break?
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