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Re: [rdiff-backup-users] --include-symbolic-links


From: Eric Beversluis
Subject: Re: [rdiff-backup-users] --include-symbolic-links
Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:24:21 -0400

Yeah--that makes sense. Fortunately I figured this out (by checking my
backup on a different box) before I had a catastrophe.

So I switched my backup command to:

rdiff-backup --exclude /home/eric/.evolution/cache/tmp
--include /home/eric --include /srv/www --exclude
'**' / /media/disk/Home-backup

Since this was just adding 300-some KB to my backup (size of /srv/www)
and I had done the /home/eric backup just a day or so back, I assumed
the backup would go very quickly. In fact it ended up taking just over
an hour.

The only reason I can guess that it took so long was that with the new
command there had to be a whole lot of re-indexing or such? Hopefully
future incremental backups will go more quickly.

Thanks.



On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 18:30 -0400, R. David Murray wrote:
> A quick look at the code reveals that --include-symbolic-links is just
> the mirror option to --exclude-symbolic-links, and is just part of the
> include/exclude file selection machinery.  That is, you can choose to
> never back up symlink files by using --exclude-symbolic-links.  Why you
> would ever want to use --include-symbolic-links is a good question,
> since they will be picked up just like normal files in a regular include.
> 
> There doesn't appear to be a mechanism to request that rdiff-backup
> _follow_ symbolic links.  I believe that to back up the linked directories
> you will have to include them using their real path name.  But the symlink
> is still going to point to the original filesystem.  In other words,
> rdiff-backup is doing a literal copy of the symlink, so that if copied
> back it will still be pointing to where it was originally pointing.
> The symlink itself is the data being backed up when it is encountered.
> 
> --David





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