Re: [rdiff-backup-users] rdiff-backup --list-increment-sizes reversed?

[Andrew Ferguson]

Seather wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> When I run an rdiff-backup --list-increment-sizes, the output seems to 
> be reversed. Am I perhaps missing something or confused about how this 
> works? In my output that I have pasted below, the "Cumulative size" 
> field decreases as the date increases. This doesn't make any sense to 
> me. Now if it was the other way around, I could understand that?

The dates are to be thought of as backup sets, not "size as of" dates.

It should be read as:
"All of the backup sets until time <Time> require a total storage space
of <Cumulative size> and the backup set at time <Time> uses up <Size>
bytes of storage."

Think about it this way: to store the Sun Oct 8 backup set, you need
1.56 GB of space (since it is the current mirror). Storing the Oct 7
backup set requires an additional 9.12 MB, for a total space of 1.57 GB.

If you deleted the backups from Oct 3 to July 27, you would save:
2.31 GB - 1.60 GB = 710 MB

You just have to remember how rdiff-backup stores it's data: current
mirror + reverse deltas.

Andrew

> server ~ # rdiff-backup --list-increment-sizes rdiffbackups
>         Time                       Size        Cumulative size
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Sun Oct  8 06:45:32 2006         1.56 GB           1.56 GB   (current 
> mirror)
> Sat Oct  7 06:45:31 2006         9.12 MB           1.57 GB
> Fri Oct  6 06:45:30 2006         2.47 MB           1.57 GB


-- 
Andrew Ferguson - address@hidden