Compressed backup mode?

Dave Dykstra dwd at bell-labs.com
Thu Nov 22 06:09:58 EST 2001


On Wed, Nov 21, 2001 at 04:47:31PM +0100, Holger Jahn wrote:
> Hi list!
> 
> Is there any way to tell rsync to keep the mirrored files compressed?
> 
> I'd like to use it for backup purposes and would like to save some
> space on the target machine.
> 
> If there's no such way, I probably have to reactivate my C-skills....
> 
> (But I hope that ain't necessary :))
> 
> Holger


No, there isn't, although people have asked about it before.  One
complicating factor is that rsync normally doesn't look at a file at all
unless the modification times and file sizes don't match, and the
size at least may be hard to compare for compressed files.  One could
go by modification times alone, but I believe somebody said that the
original file size is stored early in the header of a gzip file.

- Dave Dykstra




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