PROPOSAL: --link-hash-dest, additional linking of files to their HASH values

[Paul Slootman]

On Fri 03 Dec 2004, Helge Jensen wrote:
> 
> In order to reduce the space used for each backup, I was thinking about 
> linking all files in the backups to their hash in a separate directory, 
> allowing only one storage of each file-value, reducing my backup-needs 
> with ~5Gb per machince.
> 
> Further this would allow rysnc to represent moved files without any 
> space-usage at all, for example rotated backups and user-moved files fit 
> this description.

Yes, this would be a great addition!
Of course, you would also need to add to the hash meta data such as
owner / group / file modes...

> I realize, that there may be problems with file-system performance on 
> such large directories, but that could probably be workarounded by using 
> some prefix-subdirs.

Yes, 2-4 levels should be sufficient for most, I wonder whether it would
be worth it to make this configurable.


Paul Slootman