Re: [rdiff-backup-users] rdiff-backup when disk is full (was: Re: Trace when listing backup and not enough permissions)

[Charles Duffy]

Frederik wrote:
> Actually, rdiff-backup is a disaster in dealing with full disks:
> looking at the size of rdiff-backup-data, a lot of space is used by
> old increments. Unfortunately, rdiff-backup --remove-older-than fails
> because no more disk space is available! So this leaves me with a
> chicken and egg problem: I have to make free space, but to free space,
> I have to remove old increments, which is impossible because the disk
> is full :-(

This is a good reason to have rdiff-backup run as a non-root user under 
normal conditions (such that when doing administrative commands as root, 
your root-only buffer on the drive [you've left that turned on in the 
filesystem options, right?] is available to allow the working space needed).