[rdiff-backup-users] Re: New User Seeking Some Clarification

[Gregor Zattler]

Hi Ben,
* Ben Escoto <address@hidden> [27. Jan. 2004]:
> >>>>> Alan <address@hidden>
> >>>>> wrote the following on Fri, 9 Jan 2004 13:35:37 -0800
[...]
> > until I realized that because of the
> > bzip the .sql file was completely different each time, so the entire
> > file was transfered as an increment.  When I removed the bzip part of
> > the process the base file was larger, but the increments were much
> > smaller because they were simply text diffs of new/changed data, not a
> > binary diff of an entirely changed file. 

> I think there is a patch to gzip floating around that adds an option
> to reset the buffer at certain clever intervals.  The end result is
> that similar data gzipped stays similar---one extra byte at the
> beginning doesn't result in two totally separate gzip archives.

This is in Debian unstable since almost one year:

gzip (1.3.5-4) unstable; urgency=low

  * merge patch from Rusty Russell that adds --rsyncable option to gzip.
    This modifies the output stream to allow rsync to transfer updated .gz
    files much more effectively.  The resulting .gz files should be compatible
    with the existing gunzip.  The plan is that if this works out well for    
    Debian, the functionality will be included in a future upstream gzip
    release.  Closes: #116183, #118118, #134741                         

 -- Bdale Garbee <address@hidden>  Thu, 13 Feb 2003 23:50:23 -0700

But I did not test if this really helps reducing the size of
increments of *.gz files.

Gregor