Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Manually removing directories from the server

[Andrew Ferguson]

On Apr 14, 2008, at 8:40 AM, Yuval Hager wrote:
> On Monday 14 April 2008, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> > Yuval Hager wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I am using rsync.net as the backup server for my home computer.  
> > > The quota
> > > on the server is limited (this is a pay-by-GB service).
> >
> > Probably, the best choice is to use:
> >
> > rdiff-backup --remove-older-than
>
> But this will remove *old* entries from the backup. The situation is  
> that I
> *just finished* a backup with something I can give up on.. I would  
> hate to
> lose old history in favor of new files I don't need..
>
> What damage will be made if I delete these files directly on the  
> backup
> server?

Yes, you will need to also remove the entries for them in rdiff- 
backup's metadata logs. The metadata logs are gzip'd flat text files.  
Un-gzip them, then delete the entries for every file which you are  
manually deleting from the repository.

If you are backing-up ACLs or Extended Attributes, you will also need  
to remove the entries from those files. All of these files are stored  
in the rdiff-backup-data directory of the repository.


Alternatively, if you have only backed-up the source 1 time (and thus  
have no history), you can safely delete the rdiff-backup-data  
directory, delete all of the files which you don't want any more, then  
run rdiff-backup again with the --force option to request re-creating  
the rdiff-backup-data directory.



Andrew