On 03/30/2015 07:39 PM, Robert Nichols wrote:
Any change in the recorded metadata for a file will cause rdiff-backup
to do a time-consuming diff of the old and new files. For files with
just a single link, that data includes ModTime, Uid, Uname, Gid, Gname,
and Permissions.
Thank you. I think this explains why rdiff-backup mistakenly thought
that 98.7% of my files had been changed.
Between 2015-03-22 Sun and 2015-03-29 Sun, I switched from Xubuntu32
12.04 to Xubuntu64 14.04. Below I list the file uid, uname, gid, and
gname for about 98.7% of the files backed up in each rdiff-backup run:
Xubuntu32 12.04
uid 1000
uname bob05
gid 1000
gname bob05
Xubuntu64 14:04
uid 1000
uname bob06
gid 1000
gname bob06
That is, the uname and gname changed for 98.7% of the files. This
caused rdiff-backup to needlessly compare 98.7% of the files and to find
very few of them changed.
Perhaps uname and gname should not be included in the metadata? They
are not part of the data stored in the file or the file's directory entry.