Re: [Duplicity-talk] Running out of disk space -- new full backup?

[Grant]

>>>> If you do full backups regularly, and keep at least 2 around, you can 
>>>> always
>>>> opt to keep fewer full backups too. See remove-all-but-n-full and
>>>> remove-all-inc-of-but-n-full for some options.
>>>
>>>
>>> So far I've only done 1 full backup and all incrementals after that.
>>> Should I re-think this strategy?  Is the point of running periodic
>>> full backups to save disk space as per above?
>>>
>>> - Grant
>>>
>>>
>>>>> One of the systems I send my backups to is running out of space.  Is
>>>>> the solution to delete all of the backups and run a new full backup?
>>
>>
>> Can anyone help me figure this out?  I've been using duplicity-0.6.26
>> happily for quite a while but I'm finally up against disk space.  One
>> of my systems has 14GB in /root/.cache/duplicity/ compared to 38GB in
>> the backup target.  That seems crazy so I deleted the cache but the
>> next duplicity run brought it right back in full 14GB glory.
>>
>> Will running another full backup and using remove-all-but-n-full and
>> remove-all-inc-of-but-n-full reduce disk space usage at the backup
>> target and in the cache?
>>
>> Is there another way to reduce the disk space used as cache?
>>
>> - Grant
> Well a couple of things.  If you have a very very long backup chain of 
> incrementals it will increase the cache size a lot.  It is also less reliable 
> since if one of the incrementals is corrupted then all of the subsequent 
> incrementals will not be available.  That is why an infinite chain of 
> incrementals is not a good idea.
>
> Periodic full backups are the answer and that is why I have a script that 
> decides to make an incremental or not every 30 +/- a few days on several 
> directories.  The random +/- keeps the network from being in sync and 
> requiring a full backup of all directories on the same day.


Thanks Scott.  How best to transition from a single full backup and
infinite incrementals to running a full backup every 30 days?

Should I just use full-if-older-than, remove-all-but-n-full, and
remove-all-inc-of-but-n-full from now on?  Any other cleanup necessary
(cache or otherwise)?

- Grant