Re: [Duplicity-talk] Backup problems 0.6.17

[Ken Bass]

On 1/9/2012 10:12 AM, Kenneth Loafman wrote:

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 5:00 AM, <address@hidden> wrote:

On 08.01.2012 22:03, Ken Bass wrote:
> I've got an rdiff-backup from Windows to Linux for my Desktop and My Documents folder.
>
> I am basically using duplicity to backup the rdiff-backup results to an offline site.
>
> My "Desktop" folder is rather large (over 1G).
>
> The problem is that duplicity did the initial full backup two nights ago. After it completed, I waited a few hours and ran everything manually, and saw that a small incremental was created since nothing had changed. When I got up this morning, all 1G was re-uploaded. Why in the world is duplicity uploading things that have not changed? It only did this for my Desktop, no other folders. Just as a sample I used the restore option to grab the original backup and last nights large incremental. When I compared a few files they were identical.  What in the world would cause this and how would I go about find out why?
>
> To avoid the wasted money and bandwidth, I have reduced the size of my backup, blew away my backup, and am starting over.
>
> I don't have the archive anymore, but I do have a verbose level 5 log.
>

files are also backed up on timestamp changes.. please compare those too. duplicity backing up unnecessary because some software touched files is a known issue.

 

Instead of using rdiff-backup results, why not just backup the desktop using duplicity directly.  IOW, use both if you need to.

From what I recall (I removed the data), no timestamps changed other than the timestamp of the overall 'Desktop' directory.

I am not using duplicity for the windows machines for a few reasons:

1) I'm not sure how reliable using duplicity would be under windows. I wrote my own python frontend to rdiff-backup on the PC that creates VSS (volume snapshots) so that open files can be backed up reliably. Without VSS, duplicity (or anything else) will have a problem with open files.

2) rdiff-backup gives you a snapshot of all your files. Retrieving a file is instantaneous. There is no need to restore anything. This makes the occasional data recovery of a file very fast.

3) Using rdiff-backup over ssh is faster than samba.

4) For Linux machines, I'm using safekeep which is basically a centralized environment for rdiff-backup.

I am using duplicity only for offsite stuff where I need encryption.

My only decision with duplicity is whether I want duplicity to backup the rdiff-backup-data directory which contains the reverse deltas. Right now I am. It probably is not needed/is redundant, but might allow for better speed when restoring.

After reducing my Desktop folder to a much smaller size and starting over, it appears last nights incremental worked fine.

So, can you tell me where in the code, a decision is made whether to backup a file or not? I'm trying to figure out/debug why it would have backed all my Desktop files up again when it should not have. Maybe there is a bug under some scenario that I can help track down if someone can point me in the correct direction.