Ben Escoto wrote:
That was the old default, the current default is the preserve unames
and gnames (not uids and gids) so restoring to a new system should
work.
I know, I liked the old way better :( The old way isn't possible anymore, which
I think it should be. Let me explain.
You use rdiff-backup to backup the entire system (putting aside my concerns
about possible mtime presevervations of the package manager, which I described
above). Your HD crashed, and you're going to restore your backup. To do so, you
boot into Knoppix, somehow install rdiff-backup, and restore the backup to a new
HD. Rdiff-backup will match the UID's and GID's of the filesystem to the
/etc/passwd and /etc/group of Knoppix. Let's consider a file which belonged to
"postmaster" on the old sytem, and which had UID 14. If "postmaster" has user ID
15 on Knoppix, the restored file will have UID 15. But, because on the system
that's being restored, UID 15 is "man", the file which should belong to
"postmaster", now belongs to "man" (after booting the restored system of course).
You can modify this behavior with the --user-mapping-file or
--group-mapping-file switches.
The solve my dillema, an option like --preserve-numerical-ids should be
available. Matching against names is perfect when restoring parts of a system,
but not an entire system. It should restore the filesystem as it was, and not
get too smart.
_______________________________________________
rdiff-backup-users mailing list at [email protected]
http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/rdiff-backup-users
Wiki URL: http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/index.php/RdiffBackupWiki
