Re: [rdiff-backup-users] is there a way to disable regression?

[Ben Escoto]

>>>>> denis cardon <address@hidden>
>>>>> wrote the following on Thu, 8 Jan 2004 05:48:52 -0800 (PST)

> However, since the internet connection is vital for running the
> business (vpn stuff et al.), the backup shouldn't be lasting after
> 8:00AM. So if there has been a lot more than 500MB of data change on
> the server I need to kill the backup process.
> 
> It is not a huge problem if the file backup is late one
> day. However, since rdiff does regression, if one day backup can't
> get finished, it will never get finished again (always more data to
> backup since last snapshot).
> 
> So my question is : is there a way to disable regression? If not, is
> there a fundamental flaw in having a partial snapshot of the
> file-server (I backup only documents, no /etc/, no /usr/, no /var/).

Sorry, there's no way to disable regression.  It's a pretty hard
problem to figure out a way not to lose data and keep the archive
consistent no matter what is happening to the source side or how/when
rdiff-backup gets killed.  Regression is the best I've come up with so
far, although I have to admit it's slow, so it's a pain when a backup
session fails.

Anyway, in your case, instead of stopping rdiff-backup, and starting a
new session the next day, could you just pause the rdiff-backup
session, and let it finish the next night?  Then there would be no
regression because no session actually failed.

I'm not sure how to pause processes; it probably depends on the
operating system.  One cheap way would be to run rdiff-backup in a
window and then press Control-S to pause, Control-Q to resume.  Of
course this way doesn't seem to lend itself to automation...


-- 
Ben Escoto