Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Weird behavior of rdiff-backup : founding diffs while there isn't

[Robert Nichols]

On 11/19/2012 02:50 AM, address@hidden wrote:
> I've got some more clues after this weekend.
>
> Of course, nobody has connected to the machine (i.e. open a session)
> during the weekend.
> But on each evening when backup was running, the complete (on almost
> complete) /home/ folder of one (and only one) of the users was viewed by
> rdiff-backup as changed (in the same way I described in my former email,
> i.e. a IncrementSize of some bytes&  no actual change).
>
> Should I suspect some Kubuntu service to create this weird things ?
> (something like updatedb.mlocate, even if I doubt on this particular one).

It doesn't seem likely that a user would have a home directory consisting
almost entirely of files with multiple hard links, so it would seem that
something else is going on.

Besides the SHA1Digest (which is not used for detecting whether a file has
changed), the only metadata that rdiff-backup records for an ordinary file
with just a single hard link is size, mtime, UID, uname, GID, gname, and
permissions.  Services that run around creating indexes of files wouldn't
be changing any of that.

Take a look at the mirror_metadata.{timestamp}.{diff|snapshot}.gz file for
the prior day and compare the stored data for one of the "changed" files
with what is stored in the current mirror_metadata.{timestamp}.snapshot.gz.
(I generally open a couple windows and use _zless_ on each file to do that,
searching for for the pathname.)  If rdiff-backup thinks something changed,
there should be a difference there.

--
Bob Nichols     "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address.
                Do NOT delete it.