[rdiff-backup-users] Filesystem not big enough to hold all diff files, want to keep them, and add others.

[George Gallen]

Right now we backup 2x/day to a local filesystem (same machine). This works out great.
After 3 months of this, the filesystem where the backups are stored is started to get full.

I want to move clear out the oldest month (3 months ago), but keep it available for use.

What we are going to do is stripe a few 250gb drives to make one large filesystem.
This however will be a remote machine.

First, I want to copy the entire filesystem from the local to the remote machine, then
remove the oldest month of data from the local machine (to free up some space).

OK...no problem.

Now...next month, how can I move the newest month's worth of backups to the remote
machine, and still keep them as date specific differential files. Aside from every backup
rdiff-backup to both the remote and local mirror, then at the end of the months only
clear out the local filesystem file, and the remote will always have all available backups.

yes, we are still backing up to tape, but it's soooo much faster to restore from a HD that
is in a directory format already, rather than parse through a tar file each time.

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question #2
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Prior to moving the filesystem over, I want to pre-load the new machine with a couple
years of monthly backups. I basically will restore the tapes to another filesystem, then
run rdiff-backup on that filesystem, starting with oldest tape and working our way forward.

My question here is Can I set a date that is not the current date for the rdiff-backup.
So, if I'm starting with the Feb 2000 tape, can I tell rdiff that the date to use is 02/28/2000
and not the current system date.

I understand that once I start this process, I will not be able to add in any older tapes than
the first one I started with (can I?).

Once all my old backup tapes are loaded.

Is there a way I can merge the current mirrored filesystem on top of all these older backups
or will be be stuck with having two filesystem to pull backups from?

Thanks
George

George Gallen
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Accounting/Data Division
address@hidden
ph:856.848.1000 Ext 220

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