[rdiff-backup-users] backing up a directory that already contains an rdiff-backup-data directory

[Neil Bags]

Hi,

I'm trying to make a 'backup of a backup'. (an offsite copy of my backups that were done with rdiff-backup). I know I can achieve this with rsync, but it is slow and memory hungry and if my increments were to somehow get corrupted, rsync would just blindly copy over the corrupted versions.

So I want to use rdiff-backup to make a backup of the backup and ignore the rdiff-backup-data directory altogether so it can create a new one on the destination side.

So the command i'm trying to use is:
rdiff-backup --preserve-numeric-ids --exclude rdiff-backup-data /mnt/backups/rdiff /mnt/offsite/rdiff

However this fails with the following error:

Fatal Error: File /mnt/backups/rdiff does not look like an increment file.

Try restoring from an increment file (the filenames look like
"foobar.2001-09-01T04:49:04-07:00.diff").

It looks as if rdiff-backup thinks I want to restore rather than a backup. Has anyone got any ideas on how I can overcome this problem? I could temporarily move the rdiff-backup-data directory before I perform the offsite backup then move it back it after I'm done but that seems hacky.

Neil Bags.