[Bug 10338] New: Start deletion from the top of the hierarchy

[samba-bugs at samba.org]

https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10338

           Summary: Start deletion from the top of the hierarchy
           Product: rsync
           Version: 3.1.0
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: enhancement
          Priority: P5
         Component: core
        AssignedTo: wayned at samba.org
        ReportedBy: ben.rubson at gmail.com
         QAContact: rsync-qa at samba.org


I make my production backups with Rsync.

Here is an example of my backup tree on the destination server :
 /backups
   /2013-04-03
   /2013-04-02
   /2013-04-01
   /2013-03-31
   /2013-03-30
   /2013-03-29

At the end of the backup process, I upload a logfile in the backup directory
and delete oldest backups.

For this, I use an include/exclude file, for example this inclexcl.txt :
 + /2013-04-03
 + /2013-04-03/logfile.log
 - /2013-04-03/*
 - /2013-04-02
 - /2013-04-01

I also use this empty directory where my logfile is :
 /tmp
   /path
     /2013-04-03
       /logfile.log

And I run this rsync command :
rsync -a --delete-after --exclude-from=inclexcl.txt /tmp/path/ server::backups/

Perfect, it works, my logfile is uploaded and oldest backups are deleted (in
this example all backups of March).


However, what I can see in the daemon's log is that Rsync is browsing from the
top down all files of the backup directories to delete, and delete them one by
one.
Rsync behavior is to make a list of the files and check if any are "protected"
from deletion before it removes the file.
As each of my backup directories contains hundreds of thousands of files,
deletion take a very long time.

I think that it could be interesting to have the ability to skip this check, to
ask Rsync to start deletion from the top of the hierarchy.
Perhaps adding a new option (--delete-from-top) ?
It would for sure speed up deletion of huge directories, for instance common
daily backup directories (made for example with --link-dest), saving Rsync
overhead.

Thank you very much for this improvement !

Best regards,

Ben

-- 
Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.samba.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the QA contact for the bug.