The reason I ask is this: Recently I set out to accomplish a goal, and after exploring several options superficially, decided to explore rsnapshot and rdiff-backup in-depth as possible solutions to that goal. I am biased to believe they're both stable and reliable, just because they're included in the standard redhat & ubuntu package repositories ...
I discovered rdiff-backup wasn't being maintained, so I stepped in and became the new maintainer. My motivation was some simple front-end features, like ability to specify a backup number, like a version number in a version control system, and ability to store a "commit" comment. But now I'm seeing, there are some more important issues about integrity. As far as I can tell, the most recent "version" or "backup" is reliably always good, but sometimes people have problems with restoring past versions. If some corruption gets introduced into one of the incrementals, then anything depending on that incremental could be affected. Seems important to look into. Makes me question the reliability of all those other tools I considered too (and implicitly assumed were stable, just because they're included with redhat and ubuntu "stable" releases). Honest truth is, I've been trained, over and over, with every product - free, open source, closed, commercial, or otherwise, to never trust anything implicitly. I mentioned, for this particular goal, researching rsnapshot and rdiff-backup. Well, why should I choose one, when I can choose both? And of course, what we have actually implemented is rsnapshot, rdiff-backup, tar over ssh, and amazon EBS snapshots. Out of these 2 possible solutions, implement 4 for good measure. As a consultant, I discover time and time again, providing support for engineering teams, that no matter what we're talking about - software design, chip design, whatever - If you talk to the engineers in the backend, everything is always doom and gloom. There's always a Corillian Death Ray that's about to destroy everything. If you talk to the publicity face (sales/marketing/etc) they're always rainbows and unicorns. As the IT person, I never trust anything. Every piece of hardware, every software, every system, is expected to fail, and it's my job as IT person, to minimize harm caused by these failures. So right now, I'm transitioning from "never trust anything" to "holy crap, look at that Corillian Death Ray. I better do something about that. Nevermind the big red Mocha Latte button I came in to ask about, and then volunteered to build, and then realized why nobody's bothered implementing it before."
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