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Re: [rdiff-backup-users] backup misses files with older date
From: |
Chris Wilson |
Subject: |
Re: [rdiff-backup-users] backup misses files with older date |
Date: |
Fri, 9 Jan 2009 16:01:43 +0000 (GMT) |
Hi,
On Wed, 7 Jan 2009, bt101 wrote:
I installed rdiff-backup and used it for a few days. I was eager to see
how it would handle a small change to a large (2G) truecrypt file. I
added a small file into the truecrypt file and then performed a backup.
To my surprise, the truecrypt file was completely missed from the
backup. I then looked at the modify date of the truecrypt file and it
was old. It seems truecrypt will preserve the modify date (there's a
setting to change it if you wish).
This is an annoying and pointless misfeature of truecrypt. It causes
problems for other backup software as well. Turn it off if you want to
back up truecrypt volumes, and complain to the developers of truecrypt.
Timestamps exist for a reason and subverting them by default is dangerous
and pointless. I'm fairly sure that the ctime will change whenever the
volume is accessed as the timestamp is reset, and therefore changing the
mtime provides only the tiniest shred of obscurity.
Be that as it may, am I to understand that backup programs will
completely miss files that NEED to be backed-up, simply because their
dates are old? Do they not do a checksum or something?
Almost all backup software will honour timestamps. They exist for a
reason. Software that changes the data without changing the timestamp is
broken.
Incidentally, I am also performing a dar backup of the filesystem as
well, and it also missed the backup of this modified file.
Seems like a pretty big hole to me!
It is a big hole - in truecrypt.
Cheers, Chris.
--
_ ___ __ _
/ __/ / ,__(_)_ | Chris Wilson <0000 at qwirx.com> - Cambs UK |
/ (_/ ,\/ _/ /_ \ | Security/C/C++/Java/Perl/SQL/HTML Developer |
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