Hi all, I am now trying to use rsync for incremental backup these days, and I have two suggestions. First, I found rsync does not make backup files in case destination files have the same name with source files. I tested in some situations as below. [Source] [Destination] [Backup] Regular file Directory Created Regular file Symlink Not created Regular file Device File Not created Directory Regular file Not created Directory Symlink Not created Directory Device file Not created Symlink Any type Not created Device file Any type Not created Yes, these are rare cases, but I believe it's better to backup all kind of files. So I wrote the patch against nightly snapshot (rsync-HEAD-20020808-1120Z.tar.gz), and attached it as "rsync-2.5.6cvs-backupfix.patch". Additionally, this patch includes bug fix to correct the problem that FIFO files are sometimes backuped when src and dst files are the same. (rdev treatment problem) Second suggestion: How about adding now option "--backup-only" that means making backups only and don't change any destination files? I want to use rsync with LVM snapshot to make incremental backups like below: 1) Make LVM snapshot of file system. 2) Mount shapshots of today and yesterday. 3) Compare it to yesterday's snapshot, and backup files which are updated/deleted using rsync. (Snapshots are read-only.) 4) Delete yesterday's snapshot. So I need rsync not to modefy any destination files, and to make backups only. I attached the trial patch as "rsync-2.5.6cvs-backuponly.patch". (This patch needs rsync-2.5.6cvs-backupfix.patch to be applied first.) With this patch, new options "--backup-only" is added, and the "--backup-dir" option implies "--backup". This patch works fine for me. How do you think of my suggestions? regards. ----------------------------------------- Takeru KOMORIYA AutonomousAgentFarm Sendai Lab., Japan E-mail: komoriya@paken.org URL: http://www.paken.org/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: rsync-2.5.6cvs-backupfix.patch Type: application/octet-stream Size: 2801 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/attachments/20030812/5d3c231b/rsync-2.5.6cvs-backupfix.obj -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: rsync-2.5.6cvs-backuponly.patch Type: application/octet-stream Size: 10864 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/attachments/20030812/5d3c231b/rsync-2.5.6cvs-backuponly.obj