[rdiff-backup-users] Couple of problems

[Keith Edmunds]

Recently I had a corrupted file on a Linux system - it went to zero
bytes and the permissions were also zero. No problem: I'll restore it
from the nightly rdiff-backup...

The first problem was that I did not know when the file became
corrupted. I needed a command which would show me all the different
versions of that particular file which had been backed up, together with
the size (and the date would be useful too). Unless I've missed
something there is no such command available in rdiff-backup. I think
this could be a useful addition.

The second problem was more subtle. When I found the problem (yesterday)
I first changed the permissions on the real file (as opposed to the
backup version), and when the backup ran last night it failed with
"permission denied" error on the backup copy of this file. Observation
1: could this be a 'soft' error rather than stopping the whole backup?
Today I tried a "--list-changed-since" of the backup directory and
received the "Previous backup to xxx seems to have failed. Rerun
rdiff-backup with --check-destination-dir option to revert directory to
state before unsuccessful session." So I did that, but _that_ fails with
"IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied:
'/--directory-path--/rdiff-backup.tmp.0'"

I think I can see what is happening - rdiff-backup wants to change the
permissions of a file to those which give it no access(!), but how do I
overcome this? Should I use the --force parameter?

In summary, three questions:

1. Is there a way to list the history of changes for one given file,
preferably with file sizes too?
2. If rdiff-backup has a problem backing up one file could it continue
with the next?
3. How do I recover from the situation I'm currently in?

Thanks,
Keith