On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 8:23 PM, Matt McCutchen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, 2008-11-01 at 14:43 -0700, Jacob Balazer wrote: >> I'm trying to have rsync keep backups of changed and deleted files. >> Following the examples in the man page, I've set the backup suffix and >> created a protection filter: >> >> --delete --backup --suffix=~`date +"%Y-%m-%d"` --filter='Pp *~????-??-??' >> >> But using this protection filter, not all of my backup files were >> protected from deletion. In each subesquent run of rsync, it would >> try to delete some of my backup files. The net effect was that the >> backed up files kept getting renamed with an ever longer string of >> appended suffixes. >> >> I changed the filter to read as follows >> >> --delete --backup --suffix=~`date +"%Y-%m-%d"` --filter='P *~????-??-??' >> >> and then it worked correctly. Is "Pp" filter option as shown in the >> rsync manual page under the description of --backup a mistake? Or am >> I misunderstanding something about the way the protection filter is >> supposed to work? > > The point of the man page was that rsync automatically adds a filter to > protect your backup files, so you don't have to specify your own unless > you have other filters that might override the automatically added one. > The "p" modifier is undesirable for backup files (as you saw), and the > automatically added rule does not use this modifier; the presence of the > "p" in the man page is an inaccuracy which I will have fixed. > > Your second command is correct, and so would be a command with no > explicit --filter at all. The first command is weird, but I can't > explain why it misbehaved, since I would expect files in extraneous > destination directories to bypass your filter but then be caught by the > automatically added filter. Does anyone see something I'm missing here? > > Matt
Thank you, Matt. I think that explains my problem. In my case, the automatically added protection filter would not be enough, because it would only cover today's date (I used --suffix=~`date +"%Y-%m-%d"`), whereas the backed up files could be from older dates. I hope the extraneous "p" can be removed from the man page, to save someone else the trouble that I had. Jacob -- Please use reply-all for most replies to avoid omitting the mailing list. To unsubscribe or change options: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
