Re: [rdiff-backup-users] A "digest stand-in" Option?

[Ben Escoto]

>>>>> "KB" == Kent Borg <address@hidden>
>>>>> wrote the following on Thu, 16 Jan 2003 16:59:23 -0500

  KB> Why is this interesting?  With this feature it would be possible
  KB> to backup an entire computer, OS and all, without having to get
  KB> exclusion details exactly right, yet collapse down most of those
  KB> OS files to little digests.  Candidates for collapsing would be
  KB> everything after a fresh OS install except /etc and /home.  For
  KB> files that are better recovered from installation CDs, why copy
  KB> and haul them around?

  KB> Possible?  (Already in there?)

Well, something like this is already possible using the rdiffdir tool
in the duplicity package.  You could take a signature of the whole
hard drive right after installation, and then create diffs that bring
that original state to the current state.  The diffs wouldn't contain
any information about the old files.  To restore you could just
reinstall the OS and apply the diffs.

Now, in rdiff-backup's case, the issue is a bit trickier.  If you did
a restore, it might get confusing because rdiff-backup wouldn't be
able to restore those files that were only 'digested'.

So it is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what's the right way of
adding functionality like this..


-- 
Ben Escoto

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