Re: [rdiff-backup-users] omitting missing files

[Ben Escoto]

On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 21:44:01 -0400 Andy King <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 12:11:12PM -0700, Ben Escoto wrote:
> > Hmm, how did this error start?  Did you delete that file manually
> > from the destination directory, or did it happen when you deleted
> > the file from the source directory (assuming it ever existed)?
> 
> I believe it probably happened when a user accidentally rm'd the
> files from the backup dir without realizing it.  I realize it would
> probably be a better idea to -w the backup files...
    ...
> >  (You could always edit that directly though.)
> 
> Where would the metadata be? in just rdiff-backup-data, or somewhere
> else?

Hmm, thinking about this more, I don't see a really easy solution,
either for you or to add to rdiff-backup automatically.  If those
files are missing from the mirror directory, it should work to edit
them out of the most recent metadata file, which is under
rdiff-backup-data/mirror_metadata.<time>.{snapshot|data}.gz.

This is a gzipped text file with a fairly transparent format.  Find
the files that are missing and remove their entries (i.e. delete the
lines that correspond to those files).  Future backups of those files
should work then.

However, any restores involving those files to a time before you edit
the metadata will fail (or I think warn you that the files aren't
recoverable).  This is unavoidable because the deleted files contained
essential information for this.  Restores to later times should work
fine though.


-- 
Ben Escoto

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