(fwd from kladit@t-online.de) files of length zero

[jw schultz]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 11:28:39AM +1100, Martin Pool wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from Klaus Dittrich <kladit at t-online.de> -----
> 
> From: kladit at t-online.de (Klaus Dittrich)
> Subject: files of length zero
> Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 17:08:47 +0100
> To: mbp at samba.org
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i
> X-Bogosity: No, tests=bogofilter, spamicity=0.000000, version=0.10.2
> 
> Hi Martin,
> 
> MS-Windows users here sometimes make the expierience to become files of 
> length zero when something on windows crashes. 
> 
> They often have many files open and after a crash they don't realize
> that parts of their work gots lost.
> 
> Nightly a backup-server using rsync, copies those zero length files
> and thereby destroyes their files backed up the day before by 
> makeing it zero length too.
> 
> Can you build in an option to rsync that handles files of length zero
> the same way as deleted ones, so preserving the old file ?

Typical problem of single backup image.  By using the
--link-dest option to have multiple linked images it would
be possible for him to not only recover from this.

Divrish does this as could the rotating snapshot backups in
"resources".

One thing he might consider also would be to automatically
find and restore these files before running the backups.
That might make his windows victims even happier.


-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw at pegasys.ws

		Remember Cernan and Schmitt