Greetings,
Recently I started experimenting with backing up LVM snapshots of live
systems instead of the systems themselves. This protects against getting
complaints about files changing like:
UpdateError:
'clif/.mozilla/firefox/5zz41jpw.default/sessionstore-backups/recovery.baklz4'
Updated mirror temp file
'/leda.bak/home/clif/.mozilla/firefox/5zz41jpw.default/sessionstore-backups/rdiff-backup.tmp.75'
does not match source
So for example instead of the source being the root dir of a remote
server, it's now /mnt/vm-backup-snapshot/ on the local server. The
destination is the same. The first time I tried this I got .diff and
.diff.gz files for pretty much every file in the filesystem. The vast
majority of these files are very small like 80-100 bytes. Here is a sample:
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 96 Feb 28 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/dir.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 103 Mar 18 2021
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/systemctl.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 96 Feb 28 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/touch.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 80 Feb 28 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/rm.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 93 Jan 21 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/run-parts.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 91 Feb 28 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/chown.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 94 Mar 18 2021
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/journalctl.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 83 Feb 28 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/sync.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 96 Mar 18 2021
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/systemd-escape.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 109 Mar 18 2021
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/systemd-tty-ask-password-agent.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 90 Feb 28 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/false.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 67 Jan 5 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/zforce.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 65 Jan 5 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/znew.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 98 Jan 21 2019
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/bin/tempfile.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
The total space used by this increment was around 500MB and the largest
file was (the only file size that had a suffix):
-rw-r----- 1 root adm 2.1K Jan 22 05:21
tank-rdiff/rdiff-backup-data/increments/var/log/auth.log.2022-02-01T05:20:43-09:00.diff.gz
I looked at some of these diff files and they seemed empty except for a
binary header that I didn't find documentation for in the rdiff-backup
file format section. I also noticed that occasionally, these "empty"
diffs show up in normal day to day increments. I realize that diffs also
can show up when the permissions change but I don't think all these
files changed.
Is this how it's supposed to work, and could you please explain it to
me? :-)
Thanks,
Clif
- cross-platform backup tool Same files from different source... Mr. Clif
-