[rdiff-backup-users] Problem with multiple increments

[Jeff Simpson]

Hello,

I have rdiff-backup set up in a cron to make a daily backup of a few
directories, and after the backup is finished, clean out backups older
than 3 weeks. I also have it listing off the increments so that I have
a record of what backups and sizes I have saved in the email cron
sends me.

Now my problem is this:

Backups start every night at 4am and take about 3-4 minutes to
complete. If it takes less time on a particular night to complete, it
will not find any backups old enough to delete, so it will skip it
that night. Not a problem until the next night when it finds two
increments and decides not to delete them.

I know I can add --force to make it delete all old increments, but it
seems like I shouldn't need to use a force option when I'm using the
delete-old option exactly how it's intended to be used.

I could also add a sleep into the backup script, or run two separate
scripts timed so that it cleans out long after the backups are done.
Or I could make it clean out backups older than 2weeks 6 days and 23
hours instead of the full 3W or something silly like that.

What is the RIGHT way to do this? Is there an option I didn't see that
makes rdiff-backup do the intelligent thing in a daily backup/prune
operation?

Thanks! So far I'm loving rdiff-backup. It's nice to know that I have
a backup of all my stuff without needing to do anything fancy like a
raid setup or dvd backup.

- Jeff