Re: [Duplicity-talk] multi-level diffs; deletions

[Ben Escoto]

>>>>> "DC" == Dan Christensen <address@hidden>
>>>>> wrote the following on Mon, 03 Feb 2003 23:53:27 -0500

  DC> 1) From what I've read, duplicity only supports full backups and
  DC> one level of differential backups.  Is adding one (or more)
  DC> additional levels of differential backups something that might
  DC> happen in the near future?

Well I don't think I will have time to get to this in the next few
months.  My immediate free software goal is to get rdiff-backup to
0.12.  Then I plan to switch to duplicity and add hard link support,
better logging, and a better way of listing what files have been
backed up.  So that is my rough plan for the immediate future.  Of
course it's possible (but unlikely) someone else will add this
feature.

BTW, duplicity is fairly space efficient because it makes diffs
instead of copying all of changed files.  Multilevel backups may not
be as necessary as with other schemes.  Also, I can't think of
anything in the architecture which would preclude this
feature---duplicity would just have to keep signatures for backup sets
other than the most recent.

  DC> 2) The documentation says that deletions are stored as
  DC> zero-length files in the tar archive.  Are they flagged in some
  DC> way to differentiate them from zero-length files that haven't
  DC> been deleted?

Yes, if you untar a duplicity volume you will see each file is listed
as either a snapshot, a diff, or deleted.

  DC> 3) In the case of a complete disk failure, what's the
  DC> recommended way to do a full restore?  Is there a duplicity
  DC> rescue-disk?

I don't use duplicity to back up my system files (I use rdiff-backup
for that) so I haven't been thinking about this problem.  If you think
of something let me know.  A duplicity rescue disk seems a bit extreme
though.


-- 
Ben Escoto

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