On Jun 18, 2008, at 4:51 AM, Patrick Nagel wrote:
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Hi,
David Sickmiller wrote on 2008-06-07:
| I'm using rdiff-backup to run a nightly backup across the Internet
from
| a production server to a backup server. I'd like to be able to
produce
| monthly snapshots and save them on removable media. It'd really be
| great if I could make these snapshots on the backup server, generate
| them from past revisions, and keep all the meta data.
|
| I think I can generate an archive of the current mirror just by
making a
| tar file of it, although I'm not sure if that preserves the meta
data.
| I know it's possible to restore an old revision from rdiff-backup
to a
| regular filesystem, but I don't believe one can "restore" into a
file.
| (It's possible to use FUSE to mount a tar file, but the file
ownership
| and permissions don't work.) I've been searching online but haven't
| found much to fit this need. I find this a bit surprising... am I
| mistaken to think I want this functionality?
I'm looking for the exact same thing - did you get any useful
response? Or did
you come up with an idea?
If you tar up the current mirror, the rdiff-backup-data, but NOT the
rdiff-backup-data/increments dir, you will be able to restore the
current mirror exactly by using rdiff-backup. You could even exclude
the old files in the rdiff-backup-data dir (they are all time-stamped).
The metadata is all stored in the rdiff-backup-data/mirror_metadata.*
files. rdiff-backup attempts to apply the metadata to the mirror as
well, but the mirror_metadata files are the complete record. The most
recent file is a ".snapshot", and then there are ".diff" files to go
back to previous mirrors. To save time during restore and guard
against corruption, rdiff-backup again stores a .snapshot every 10
increments.
rdiff-backup stores the mirror in "reverse diff" format. That is, the
contents of the mirror are always the most recent backup, and the
rdiff-backup-data/increments/ dir stores reverse diffs to go back in
time. By not keeping those snapshots, you only lose the ability to
restore timepoints previous to the snapshot. Of course, if you have
enough space to store the increments as well, there's no downside.
They are stored compressed, so it's worth checking how big the
directory is.
Regarding the restore to a FUSE-mounted tar, maybe there's an option
analogous to tar's --preserve-permissions to do what you want?
Andrew
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