Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Easy Way to Find Lost Files ?

[Andrew Ferguson]

On Jan 17, 2009, at 1:45 PM, Damon Timm wrote:
> Is there anyway to search a range of dates ?  Like 6weeks to 5weeks
> ago, by chance ?  Anyway, using that, with grep, probably would be
> enough to find what I am looking for.  It doesn't happen that often,
> but, I suppose, that is what the incremental is for!

A good approach to that would be using software which prepares an  
alternate presentation of the repository, such as archfs, http://code.google.com/p/archfs/ 
 or one of the Web front ends: http://wiki.rdiff-backup.org/wiki/index.php/GraphicalUserInterfaces

> On another note, any thoughts on how I might have rdiff-backup
> --remove-older-than only when hard drive space is too low for the next
> backup (and only remove the oldest version necessary to free up enough
> space) ?

That's a suggested feature:
http://wiki.rdiff-backup.org/wiki/index.php/DeleteEnoughToFinish

The reason it hasn't been implemented is that it would require either  
figuring out how much space is needed beforehand (which requires  
scanning the whole source repository in advance, something which rdiff- 
backup is currently not setup for; however implementing that  
functionality would allow various other requested features to be  
developed), or rdiff-backup would have to detect that out-of-disk- 
space event, reverse the current session, delete an increment, and  
start over (that, of course, hits a horrible case when the current  
backup wants to add a, say, 40GB file, and deleting each increment  
only frees a few MB or so).


You might want to checkout the Wiki, particularly SuggestedFeatures,  
TipsAndTricks, and ContribSripts.


Andrew