RE: [Bug-tar] Skipped files with --listed-incremental after rename

[Alex Adriaanse]

Hi Paul,

Rename indeed modifies the ctime of the parent directory.  How would one
modify tar to use the parent directories' ctime to determine which child
files to dump?  The only way I can think of is to have tar backup all the
files in a directory if the directory's ctime is newer than the directory's
ctime in the snapshot file (which is terribly inefficient).  Can you think
of a better way to do this?  How hard would it be to fix this problem in
tar?

>From glancing over the documentation for star 1.5 beta (which doesn't have a
complete implementation of incremental backups yet), it saves all the inode
metadata and I guess uses that to determine which files to backup.

Thanks,

Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Eggert [mailto:address@hidden Behalf Of Paul
Eggert
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2003 12:04 AM
To: Alex Adriaanse
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [Bug-tar] Skipped files with --listed-incremental after
rename


"Alex Adriaanse" <address@hidden> writes:

> is there any better way to address this problem?

rename has to modify the ctime of the parent directories involved.
tar should use the parent directories' ctime to decide whether to
dump the child files.

If memory serves, 'star' does this a different (and better) way,
but I haven't looked into it.