Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Delete most recent increment?

[Dominic Raferd]

On 18/12/2013 15:43, Adrian Klaver wrote:
> On 12/18/2013 03:29 AM, Ron Leach wrote:
> > On 16/12/2013 15:28, Dominic Raferd wrote:
> > > Ron, see my utility here:
> > > http://www.timedicer.co.uk/programs/help/rdiff-backup-regress.sh.php
> > Dominic, thank you for posting this.  From its description, it would
> > seem to do exactly what we need.
> >
> > I have not tried it.  You'll think this odd, perhaps, but because this
> > library is fairly important to us, I am reluctant to run anything that I
> > could not first audit; for example, I would want to check for side
> > effects, or 'assumptions' about the states of the source path or the
> > backup path or the backups there or something, whether there was
> > anything which might be problematic over NFS (file locking, for example)
> > or whether the size of the increment might matter or, even,
> > Debian-version sensitive, but these are just examples of concerns and is
> > not meant to be an exhaustive list.  Sadly, I'm not familiar with
> > scripting language, so I was unable to check the script to see whether
> > our data, or our backup regime would create any problems for, or incur
> > any problems following, running the script.
> >
> > So, I'd prefer to do something 'manually', if it were possible, so that
> > I could be aware of what changes were happening.
> Take a look at this;
> http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/two-way-mirrors-of-external-mailing-lists-3/rdiff-backup-23/force-a-regression-of-rdiff-backup-archive-104028/

It was based on this insight of Janne's that I developed my bash script 
(my reply can be seen at 
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/rdiff-backup-users/2011-01/msg00030.html). 
The script has been slightly updated since that posting.

Robert's analysis is quite correct, the method is to trick rdiff-backup 
into thinking that the previous backup failed and thus make 
--check-destination-dir trigger a regression. He is also right to point 
out that regressions can take a long time.

I have used it with success, but I am not offering a warranty, so I 
quite understand Ron's caution.

Dominic

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