Hi everyone, I'm new to using rdiff-backup. I've been using Scott Ludwig's Link-Backup (http://www.scottlu.com/Content/Link-Backup.html) but the situation has changed and I'm looking for a new solution. (I work with Scott and he is in the same bind I am). I have a linux machine hosted in a datacenter and I do nightly backups to that machine over my cable modem. Most of what I'm backing up are image files. I have a small kid and like to go on photography trips so I sometimes have large bursts of data (10GB or so at a time is not uncommon). Because of this, I usually can't fit in an entire backup without dropping a connection (or stopping for regular daytime use of the cable modem). In addition, it is not uncommon to want to rename and move files around. Obviously, I don't want to be moving lots of data around (and wasting space on the server) for simple renames.
What has changed is that I've started using Lightroom to manage and tag these photos and it writes to jpg files to change the metadata. This causes link-backup to thrash. It looks like rdiff-backup might be a good starting point, but I'd need to add some features first before I could start using it. Here is a summary of what link-backup is good at: 1) Backs up over multiple sessions. If a backup fails, most of the progress so far isn't lost. 2) Robust against file renames/moves (as long as the data hasn't changed). 3) Out of band "sneaker net" updates. It is possible to load a bunch of data on a laptop/external drive, go to the remote machine and move the data over. 4) File system view of all previous versions. Here is what I don't like about link-backup: 1) Doesn't handle diffs well 2) Uses hardlinks -- much harder to copy data from one volume to another -- rsync works but it takes a long time and lots of memory to solve all of the hardlinks. To make rdiff-backup work for me, I'd have to add the following features initially: 1) Support for recovering dropped or lost backups. 2) Support for handling moved files. 3) Add sneaker net type backups. In addition, I'd be very interested in hearing anyone's experience with the FUSE filesystem for accessing previous backups for rdiff-backup (http://code.google.com/soc/2007/gentoo/appinfo.html?csaid=54C92C8CD707C04D). This looks to be a Google SoC project and is very interesting. So -- questions to the group: Are these features welcome? Is anyone already working on these? Is there a development mailing list? Thanks! Joe Beda _______________________________________________ rdiff-backup-users mailing list at [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/rdiff-backup-users Wiki URL: http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/index.php/RdiffBackupWiki
