Re: [Bug-tar] Incremental restore seems to first create then rename

[Felix E. Klee]

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 21:29:03 +0200 Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Check 'star' ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/alpha/
> 
> star-1.5a47 introduced a incremental restore that just does what you
> like...

I already considered that tool. Today, I tried it out, and it handles
the test cases I originally threw at GNU tar flawlessly. What I haven't
tested yet, is pattern matching. Hopefully, this allows me to include
only parts of the directory tree when doing dumps (I don't want to back
up temporary directories, etc.). Anyways, at first sight, star looks
like a very powerful TAR implementation.

> Read AN-1.5a47 for more information.

I read it, but star does not behave entirely as documented. See the
attached example script as an example. Here's what happens:

1. A text file 2store/C/y is created (and some other files).
2. The level 0 dump of the directory 2store is performed.
3. The file 2store/C/y is removed and, immediately afterwards, the text
   file 2store/C/z is created. In the following, I assume that it gets
   the same inode number as 2store/C/y (if it doesn't, then the bug
   probably doesn't occur).
4. The level 1 dump of 2store is performed.
5. The restore of the level 0 dump is performed in the directory
   restore.  
6. The restore of the level 1 dump is performed in the directory
   restore.
7. Now everything is correctly restored, but: The directory
   restore/star-tmpdir is empty. According to AN-1.5a47, it should contain
   a file with the contents of 2store/C/y.

Felix