Hi all, On 03/19/14 07:39, John Gamble wrote: > Thanks for your reply and apologies for not noticing that bit in the manual. > So > if I've understood it properly, the answer is yes, Tarsnap can re-start a > partial archive.
Not exactly. You can create a new archive, and any data available on the server side -- if you hit ^Q or sent a SIGQUIT and waited for tarsnap to exit cleanly, or from automatic checkpoints, or from previous archives -- will be used for deduplication in order to reduce the amount of new data which needs to be uploaded. But if you were creating an archive named "backup-wednesday" and it was truncated (deliberately or because it failed and a checkpoint was recovered) then you'll have an archive named "backup-wednesday.part", and you won't be able to create a new archive named "backup-wednesday". You'll be able to create a new archive named "backup-thursday", however, and then you'll have two archives stored. (After which point you might want to delete the first partial archive.) > I guess the command to re-start would be exactly the same as > the initial command. Would that be a fair assumption? Yes except that you need to pick a new name. Once you create an archive with a particular name, it cannot be overwritten -- it can only be deleted, and that only if you have the delete keys. Being able to separate "can create archives" and "can delete/destroy previously created archives" (see tarsnap-keymgmt) is very important in high security environments. > If this isn't a completely thick question, how would I know the archive was > now > whole and complete? That is, no data missing or lost? If tarsnap exits without errors, the archive completed successfully. Also, if 'tarsnap --list-archives' shows the archive name (without ".part" added to the end) then the archive was not truncated. -- Colin Percival Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid
