restoring incremental backups

[Raphael Jaffey]

Rework the script using --link-dest=<previous-day> rather than --backup and
--backup-dir.  This way a directory for each day of the week will contain an
exact (complete) snapshot from the corresponding day of the tree(s) you're
backing up.  Unchanged files share storage on the backup server via multiple
hard links and restoration is quite straightforward.

Quoting Erik Romijn <erik at toltech.nl>:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm using rsync to make incremental backups, which appears to work fine.
> I use a script quite similar to the first one on 
> http://rsync.samba.org/examples.html (incremental 7 day to remote host).
> However, I can't seem to find a nice way to restore a backup other than 
> the current backup.
> 
> Assuming the following situation:
> current - made today, contains up-to-date versions of all files
> saturday - made yesterday, contains the old versions of every file
> 	   that was deleted/changed in current with the last backup run
> friday - made 2 days ago, contains the old versions of every file that
> 	 that was deleted/changed compared to yesterday's current
> 
> A bit complicated, but my problem is this: I want to restore the system 
> as it was on friday.
> One way to do it is to restore current, overwrite it with saturday (and 
> delete all files that are in current but not in saturday) and then 
> overwrite it with friday (and delete ...).
> However, this seems quite ugly to me. Isn't there a way to tell rsync: 
> restore the situation from friday, incrementals made after that are 
> saturday, current tree is current? I have been unable to find any 
> information about that.
> Or would I have to build a wrapper myself?
> 
> greets,
> Erik Romijn
>