Hi,
Jamie Burchell wrote on 2017-11-18 16:23:41 +0000 [[BackupPC-users]
Documentation version discrepancies]:
> As I've been learning backuppc and studying the documentation I noticed
> that the documentation supplied in the Web UI is different to what's
> currently online. This has undoubtedly contributed towards my confusion as
> the terminology changes depending on which document I happen to have access
> to when I'm looking.
>
> For example, this excerpt talking about full and filled backups. It sounds
> like filled backups are more of a legacy thing too.
quite the opposite, I believe. Filled backups didn't have much meaning before
BackupPC 4.x.
> Why not remove the docs from the web UI and point the menu to the latest
> online docs? I know this can be done in the admin, I mean by default.
Off the top of my head, I can think of two good reasons.
1.) Internet access is by no means a requirement of BackupPC. Supposing you
don't have internet access, the reference to the online docs won't work.
As long as you have access to the Web UI, documentation contained therein
will always work.
2.) There are different versions of BackupPC in use, and as development
continues, there will be more of them. Documentation may change as
BackupPC changes and not be applicable to previous versions. While you
*can* reference distinct online versions of the documentation, you gain
exactly nothing. If you do that, you might as well distribute the online
documentation you would want to reference with the BackupPC version it
applies to.
What you are probably thinking of is an evolving documentation that gets
better while the installed BackupPC version stays the same. This evolving
documentation would need to account for differences in BackupPC versions,
thus becoming more and more complex and confusing - much the opposite from
what you are trying to achieve.
As for the pure information, there is simply so much of it out there, that
people don't find (or don't read) what they are looking for. I've explained
the difference between full and incremental backups here so many times, that
I'm simply tired of repeating it when it comes up once again. In a nutshell,
incremental backups are a trade-off of exactness for speed, invented in an
era when it was simply not feasible to do daily (tape-based) full backups.
There might be valid reasons even today for not doing full backups daily, but
the apparent general attitude of "I don't need exact backups, I just need fast
backups" begs for the answer "don't do any backups at all - that's as fast
as it gets, and it's not much worse than inaccurate backups". Of course, your
application may vary (and BackupPC incremental backups are in general
reasonably accurate, presuming you are using rsync(d)).
Regards,
Holger
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