Re: [Duplicity-talk] --archive-dir is growing in size, how can I reduce it?

[edgar . soldin]

On 08.12.2011 16:24, Alex Cartwright wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I backup quite a lot of directories to AS3 all with separate duplicity
> commands running as root, and the --archive-dir
> (/root/.cache/duplicity) is constantly growing in size with every
> backup. This directory grows by about 300MB every month (which is when
> I do a full backup instead of incremental).
> 
> My problem is that come next month, I'm not going to have room for
> duplicity to do its backup because of this and I need to reduce it as
> soon as possible. The man page states that I shouldn't remove it, but
> is there something I can do with "cleanup" maybe?
> 

the archive dir contains unencrypted metainformation about the backup. the 
bigger the backup (size or sets) the more meta data accumulates. it is used 
locally to list backup contents faster or to resume without the need for a 
decrypting key, but this is not implemented cleanly yet.

anyway you can delete the folder but on the next run it will be recreated 
probably growing similarly big. to effectively minimize the size you should 
consider 
a. deleting backups, hence having less meta data
or 
b. deleting the old archive-dir and backing up into a new folder, the meta data 
will grow over time again until you draw the brakes and repeat the cycle

..ede/duply.net