Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Feature requests questions/discussion

[Wiebe Cazemier]

Ben Escoto wrote:
> It's a good idea, and one that someone else has suggested before.  The
> checksums would be stored in the mirror-metadata file.  I don't even
> think it would be hard to implement.  

Do you think it's possible to combine it with the copy syscall/API-call 
rdiff-backup probably uses so that the data which is read by copying is 
checksummed at the same time? If it is, it wouldn't even take more time to 
backup a new file than it would without checksums.

> And there could be a --verify
> switch to go through the repository and make sure everything checksums
> correctly.

Indeed, I even forgot this.

> You
> mentioned ctime before, I was going to add in ctime checking but there
> was some complication (I forget what) and it never got in.

If --checksum-diffs would make it, I wouldn't need ctime checking. But I guess 
there is value for such an option (speed being a definite advantage), as a third 
change-detection method. But it won't be widely useable I guess. I wouldn't be 
surprised if NFS or SAMBA don't supply correct ctimes. And what about FAT32? 
Doing ls -lc does reveil different times than a normal ls -l, but does that FS, 
and the windows driver which controlles it, properly set ctimes?