Re: [rdiff-backup-users] how to shrink/purge/truncate the metadata file (and the file_statistics file)?

[=JeffH]

> I think there may be a misunderstanding here.

yes, I was (and probably still somewhat am) misunderstanding how rdiff-backup 
works under the hood.

But Adrian's msgs helped me out there (and so does yours, thanks).


> If it's really a problem then you could just delete the rdiff-backup-data
> directory and backup with --force next time, which removes all older
> increments but does avoid the need to re-transfer all the data.

ah ha, that's a very useful technique to know (thanks!), because before I had 
(once or twice) just plain been gunning all the data on the backup disk (rm -rf 
*), and then doing a backup (which took forever -- 170+ GB over usb2). Plus my 
fear of having that window of time where my source files weren't backed up...

=JeffH