Re: [Duplicity-talk] can I move where the signature files go instead of /tmp?

[Ben Escoto]

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:24:03 -0600 Rob Browning <address@hidden> wrote:
> I'm not sure whether or not this has already been discussed, but in
> cases where the duplicity url is local, i.e. file:///foo, could
> duplicity be altered to use the files "in-place"?  What is it that
> duplicity has to cache in tmp normally?

Sorry for the delay, but I did not know the answer offhand.  Looking
through the code, it seems that tempfiles are used in only two
different ways:

1.  The case you alluded to, where the repository is remote.  Then
    files are stored in the tempdir before they are transferred by
    ssh, ftp, or whatever.

2.  When restoring, the temp directory is used to hold intermediate
    file states.  For instance, when restoring a backup collection
    that consists of a full backup set and two diff sets, then
    something like this happens:

      Archive file ====> Version 1 ====> Version 2 ====> Final Version
                  extract          diff1           diff2

    We only want the final version, so Versions 1 and 2 are stored in
    the temp directory.

When backing up locally, it seems that there would be no need to use a
temp directory.  However, this would complicated the design somewhat,
as right now all backends are treated separately and provide the same
basic functions.

A compromise that may be promising would be for the local backend to
try copying the file via hard linking first, and then copying if that
failed.  If it worked, hard linking would have many of the same
benefits as writing the file in place, but the files could still be
generated the same way, without thinking about the backend.


-- 
Ben Escoto

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