Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Re: New user, some simple questions

[Daryl Styrk]

Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> Daryl Styrk wrote:
> > It was ext3.  Currently undergoing dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdb1 . Not
> > that I gave up on the project. I figured might as well encrypt the drive
> > with the contents /home if it's going to be sitting around unattended.
>
> Reasonable choice.  I recommend cryptsetup(-)luks. You should be aware,
> though, that that will slow down rdiff-backup, which is already slow
> (through no fault of its own) due to the rdiffs.
>
> > Moving a bit off-topic, I was planning on formatting back to ext3.  Or
> > would ext2 be a better choice?
>
> I would recommend ext3 or ext4 (though I haven't used the latter yet).
>
> Matt Flaschen

Yes, cryptsetup luks is what I use.

I'll have to stay with ext3, currently using 2.6.26 (Debian Lenny) here 
so I'll wait on ext4. Although I see...

http://ext4.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Ext4_Howto

"In Debian Lenny (Testing), the following current packages provide ext4 
support:

    * ext4dev module in the linux-image package (2.6.26-10)
    * e2fsprogs (1.41.3-1)

It should be noted that the stock 2.6.26 ext4 has problems with delayed 
allocation and with filesystems with non-extent based files. So until 
Debian starts shipping a 2.6.27 based kernel or a 2.6.26 kernel with at 
least the 2.6.26-ext4-7 patchset, you should mount ext4dev filesystems 
using -o nodelalloc and only use freshly created filesystems using 
"mke2fs -t ext4dev". (Without these fixes, if you try to use an ext3 
filesystem which was converted using tune2fs -E test_fs -o extents 
/dev/DEV, you will probably hit a kernel BUG the moment you try to 
delete or truncate an old non-extent based file.) "


And I'm in no rush to try new things with important backups.  The 
compromise of speed seems acceptable given the disk space constraints 
I'm under.


Daryl