Re: [Duplicity-talk] Merge daily backups?

[edgar . soldin]

On 18.07.2016 08:17, Greg Bell via Duplicity-talk wrote:
> Hi Duplicity,
> 
> My use-case is similar to this thread: 
> http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/duplicity-talk/2016-06/msg00020.html
> 
> But my backups are over the internet to a remote host.  So my full backup 
> will take weeks.
> 
> And I want to do daily incrementals.
> 
> According to the above thread, that'd be a bad idea.  Ghozlane recommended 
> the remove-older-than and remove-all-inc-of-but-n-full options.
> 
> Does the remove-all-inc-of-but-n-full merge the incrementals into one?
> 
> Ideally I'd like to have my daily backups result in just a few incremental 
> sets (varying between 1 and n depending on how often I merge).  The idea of 
> thousands of incremental sets, reliant on each other for the backup's 
> integrity, is scary.
> 
> Am I off in the weeds here?
> 

nope, long chains are risky! unfortunately does duplicity not sport a merge 
feature, which would be kind of traffic intensive anyways, as all volumes have 
to be downloaded, processed and uploaded to the backend again.

what duplicity users usually do is to keep an eye on chain length and decide a 
new chain interval that fit's their purpose and force full backups then. as 
this sometimes takes long to process/upload the usual workaround is to backup 
to a local file:// target and sync this folder to a backend of choice w/ an 
appropriate client.

if you are feeling adventurous, you may copy the full backup (the file names 
are quite intuitive) to a new folder and run your new incremental against that. 
that's a hack, known to work.

remember - backup is about data safety. run a verify from time to time.

..ede/duply.net