Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Duplicate mirror? [was Re: workaround for "[Errno 91] File name too long..."?]

[David]

> Perhaps I should explain my objective - duplicating a mirror.  I used
> "cp -r", but this threw some exceptions like so
> cp: cannot create special file
> `BU2/home/morgan/.bittorrent/data/ui_socket.lnk': Invalid argument
>
> After looking through the man page I thought I should heed the warnings
> about not writing a mirror with anything but rdiff, so backed it up
> again assuming the first incremental I did to the new mirror from source
> would sink the extra rdiff-backup-data directory, and the rest is
> history...
>
> So, is there a recommended way to duplicate a (fresh) mirror to avoid
> running rdiff-backup to the same media twice?
>

I suggest rsync to duplicate an existing mirror.

eg: rsync -aH --progress --delete /source/ /dest/

Using rdiff-backup to backup a rdiff-backup folder will firstly have
problems because of an existing "rdiff-backup-data" folder at the
source, which may confuse rdiff-backup running on the copied data
(this sounds like what you have now). You could work around this by
backing up the parent folder instead.

eg: rdiff-backup /source_parent/ /dest/ (assuming source is here:
/source_parent/source)

 But this means your 2nd mirror will store 2 sets of history. The
original rdiff-backup history (under /dest/source/rdiff-backup) and a
new rdiff-backup history (under /dest/rdiff-backup). This may not be
what you want.

That said, rsync might not be appropriate in all cases. eg you may
have problems running rdiff-backup on the copy if an rsync is in
process or if the most recent rsync had problems. (there are various
rsync options you can use if this is a problem for you).