Re: version 2.2 --remove-older-than behavior changed

[Derek Atkins]

Eric,

On Fri, February 17, 2023 6:52 am, Eric Zolf wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 17/02/2023 09:00, Reio Remma wrote:
>> Getting complicated. I agree, that "No increment is older than 20D"
>> shouldn't be a warning, it's quite normal behaviour.
>
> Here we can agree to disagree, because it depends on the context, but
> I'd ask why did you start this command if you knew that nothing would
> happen and you are not surprised by the result?

I have a script that backs up a bunch of servers and then after the backup
re-runs rdiff-backup to remove increments older than 1y.  Sometimes there
are none (for example, if there was a power outage a year before causing
the backups to fail then).  To my mind, this case is NOT AN ERROR.

Did I know nothing would happen?  No.
Am I surprised by the result?  No.
Do I expect an error code?  No.
Do I want to have to rewrite my script?  Definitely Not!

This gets even more complicated because my script is set up to run
multiple versions of rdiff-backup based on the version on the target
machine!  Right now I have 1.2.8 and 2.0 both running simultaneously on
the backup server.  Right now I can configure the rdiff-backup version in
the per-target config, but the script that runs the command is common.  If
I have to change the script to handle errors differently, that would
very-much complicate my backup system.

> KR, Eric

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins                 617-623-3745
       derek@ihtfp.com             www.ihtfp.com
       Computer and Internet Security Consultant