Is there a howto/tutorial on backups/rsync that covers the use of hard and soft links?

Karl O. Pinc kop at meme.com
Wed Jan 23 06:30:16 MST 2013


On 01/23/2013 02:15:06 AM, Voelker, Bernhard wrote:
> Kevin Korb wrote:
> > On 01/22/13 18:12, Kevin Korb wrote:
> > > That is the old way that pre-dates --link-dest.  Instead of cp -
> al
> 
> > > daily.02 daily.01 you can do a mkdir daily.01 then an rsync ... 
> > > --link-dest=../daily.02 daily.01

> I'm using a similar script on some desktop PCs. The problem is,
> that - due to the fact that it's a desktop PC - the backup can
> be killed during a shutdown ... leaving the last backup uncomplete.
> That's not a problem per se, but with the next backup, the missing
> files are copied freshly from the source and thus exhausting backup
> space.
> Therefore, the script I'm using rotates the snapshot *after* a
> successful run of rsync.

The solution is to use --link-dest twice, or more, to older
versions of the backup.  If the file is not in the most recent
backup then the older version(s) are hardlinked to.

Regards,

Karl <kop at meme.com>
Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
                 -- Robert A. Heinlein



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