Re: [Duplicity-talk] Why aren't my old backup sets being deleted?

[edgar . soldin]

On 16.09.2012 23:22, Joe Auty wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm trying to turn over a ton of old incremental backups, so I did a new full 
> backup which just completed yesterday, but old backups are not being deleted 
> with the following Duplicity arguments:
> 
> duplicity remove-older-than 3M --force --tempdir ${TEMPDIR} --archive-dir 
> ${ARCHIVEDIR} ${DEST}
>                                                                       
> duplicity --full-if-older-than 3M --tempdir ${TEMPDIR} --archive-dir 
> ${ARCHIVEDIR} --gpg-options "--compress-algo=bzip2 --bzip2-compress-level=9" 
> --asynchronous-upload --encrypt-key=${GPG_KEY} --sign-key=${GPG_KEY} 
> --s3-use-rrs --s3-use-new-style ${SOURCE} ${DEST}     
> 
> I'm getting the following, which I can't make sense of since Duplicity seems 
> to recognize my new full backup I made yesterday according to this output, if 
> this is to be taken at face value... How can I delete these old sets, and why 
> is this happening? I've tried a:
> 
> duplicity cleanup --extra-clean --tempdir ${TEMPDIR} --archive-dir 
> ${ARCHIVEDIR} --force ${DEST}  
> 
> Which did not help. Here is my output for the remove-older-than command which 
> I can't make sense of:
> 
> 
> Local and Remote metadata are synchronized, no sync needed.
> Last full backup date: Sat Sep 15 03:14:57 2012
> There are backup set(s) at time(s):
> Wed Aug  3 03:31:17 2011
> Thu Aug  4 20:09:12 2011
> Thu Aug  4 22:46:59 2011
> Fri Aug  5 01:34:00 2011
> Sun Aug  7 02:15:07 2011
> Sun Sep  4 02:15:04 2011
> Sun Sep 11 02:15:06 2011
> Sun Sep 18 02:15:24 2011
> Sun Sep 25 02:15:04 2011
> Sun Oct  2 02:15:06 2011
> Sun Oct  9 02:15:04 2011
> Sun Oct 30 02:15:05 2011
> Sun Nov  6 02:15:07 2011
> Sun Nov 13 18:18:32 2011
> Sun Nov 20 02:15:12 2011
> Sun Nov 27 02:15:09 2011
> Sun Dec  4 02:15:10 2011
> Sun Dec 11 02:15:10 2011
> Sun Dec 18 02:15:10 2011
> Sun Dec 25 02:15:11 2011
> Sun Jan  1 02:15:13 2012
> Sun Jan  8 02:15:10 2012
> Sun Jan 15 02:15:12 2012
> Sun Jan 22 02:15:11 2012
> Sun Jan 29 02:15:09 2012
> Sun Feb  5 02:15:10 2012
> Sun Feb 12 02:15:12 2012
> Sun Feb 19 02:15:10 2012
> Sun Feb 26 02:15:09 2012
> Sun Mar  4 02:15:11 2012
> Sun Mar 11 03:00:11 2012
> Sun Mar 18 02:15:50 2012
> Sun Mar 25 02:15:15 2012
> Sun Apr  1 02:15:10 2012
> Sun Apr  8 02:15:11 2012
> Sun Apr 15 02:15:10 2012
> Sun Apr 22 02:15:11 2012
> Sun Apr 29 02:15:11 2012
> Sun May  6 02:15:31 2012
> Sun May 13 02:15:11 2012
> Sun May 20 02:15:10 2012
> Fri May 25 02:15:13 2012
> Sat May 26 02:15:09 2012
> Sun May 27 02:15:09 2012
> Mon May 28 02:15:10 2012
> Tue May 29 02:15:11 2012
> Wed May 30 02:15:13 2012
> Thu May 31 02:15:11 2012
> Fri Jun  1 02:15:09 2012
> Sat Jun  2 02:15:10 2012
> Sun Jun  3 02:15:08 2012
> Mon Jun  4 02:15:12 2012
> Tue Jun  5 02:15:17 2012
> Wed Jun  6 02:15:27 2012
> Thu Jun  7 02:15:18 2012
> Fri Jun  8 02:15:34 2012
> Sat Jun  9 02:15:13 2012
> Sun Jun 10 02:15:11 2012
> Mon Jun 11 02:15:11 2012
> Tue Jun 12 02:15:13 2012
> Wed Jun 13 02:15:15 2012
> Thu Jun 14 02:15:15 2012
> Fri Jun 15 02:15:13 2012
> Sat Jun 16 02:15:14 2012
> Mon Jun 18 02:15:16 2012
> Which can't be deleted because newer sets depend on them.
> No old backup sets found, nothing deleted.
> 
> 
> 
> 

pretty obvious.. run a collection-status with duplicity an you'll see that some 
younger incrementals (_duplicity tells you so above_) depend on backups you are 
trying to delete. deleting the older backups would render them defective.

solution:
 choose to delete the whole chain by giving the time where the next new full 
starts
or
 do fulls more regularly to be able to delete more frequently.

ede/duply.net