Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Write-once read-many problem

[Maarten Bezemer]

Hi,

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, dean gaudet wrote:

> > So I'll just carry this patch on my central server (it's not required on 
> > restore clients), and we can all pretend this didn't happen until the 
> > next person tries to use rdiff-backup to restore from a read-only 
> > location. :-)
> 
> i'm tempted to change it so that a command line option is required to 
> enable the mode futzing... by default i'd really prefer backup and restore 
> sources be completely read-only.

Is it necessary to be able to 'run' off (a copy of) the backup tree, or is
running from a restored tree enough?
I'm using rdiff-backup to backup all files to a normal user account on the
backup server. Only regular files and directories, no symlinks or other
special files. I use find and tar for those 'files', prior to running
rdiff-backup.
The metadata file contains file mode / ownership information, so for me
it's not necessary that all files, directories etc. in the backup tree
have the same permissions as the original ones.

(Note that rdiff-backup is run as root on the server being backed up,
which is the only reasonable thing to do, imho.)


That said, I realize this may not be a useful setup for everyone. If you
require the backup tree to be an exact mirror of the original, having a
metadata file with the correct information doesn't help much when the
trees themselves are different in some respect.

I think having a command line option to choose between a mirror (root
required) and e.g. a backup tree with all files/dirs/... having mode
0600 (files) or 0700 (dirs) (or use umask?) might be nice.


Regards,
 Maarten