Re: [rdiff-backup-users] moving synced directories

[Maarten Bezemer]

Hi,

On Tue, 16 Oct 2007, Kurt Yoder wrote:

> When I want to do this kind of thing, I usually rsync the existing  
> backup, *minus* the rdiff-backup-data directory. Then I run rdiff- 
> backup from the new machine with the --force option. So in your  
> example, you'd do something like:
> 
> rsync -av --exclude --numeric-ids './rdiff-backup-data' /copy/office/ 
> office1 /copy/office/office2

I think you added the --numeric-ids parameter at a later time? It now
seems to split the --exclude parameter from its argument...

Aside from that, my understanding of the OP's question seems to differ
from your's. Only now I realise that we're missing some input ;-)

First, there was /home/office, being backed up to remote::/copy/office
Now, with the second office, an office1 and an office2 are suggested.
Chris: Do both offices share the same /home drive or are they completely
separated?

If they are separated, both offices can just use /home/office locally.
Backing up those to one machine can simply be done to two separate trees,
e.g. /copy/office1 and /copy/office2. Or to /copy/office/office1 and
/copy/office/office2. If you now have /copy/office/rdiff-backup-data then
you can move around and even rename the office directory any way you
like. For example: rename it to office1 (mv /copy/office /copy/office1),
create a new office subdir (mkdir /copy/office), and move the old tree
inside the new subdir (mv /copy/office1 /copy/office)
If the two locations need to be backed up separately, you can not store
them in only 1 rdiff-backup tree.

If you explicitly want to move /home/office to /home/office/office1 at the
source side, that should also not be a problem, under the condition that 
you change your backup command line to backup /home/office/office1 instead
of plain /home/office. Keep in mind, however, that applications depending
on absolute path names may break if you rename/move home directories.


This being said, I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts about moving
entire folders in systems being backed up using rdiff-backup. Currently
this involves removing the original files (as if they were deleted) and
adding new files in the new location. This has been a wishlist item for
quite some time, but I don't recall anyone discussing implementation
ideas.


HTH,
 Maarten