rsync - May 2010 - Sync different copies of a filesystem

I have 5 or 6 :-( different copies of a filesystem on various Linux
boxen, all backups taken at different times, with different exclusions,
and squirreled away. Now's the time to clean up my attic. I'd like to
merge them all into one big filesystem. When there are different copies
of the same files, I'd like to keep the newest; I don't know what else
to do. My plan (assuming I'm going to retain 'path0' as the
surviving
filesystem) goes like this:

rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-1 path0
rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-2 path0
rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-3 path0
rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-4 path0
rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-5 path0

and then rm -rf "path-to-system-?", and hope for the best.

What kind of disaster can I look forward to with this approach, and is
there a better one?

Thanks!

-- 
_________________________________________
Nachman Yaakov Ziskind, FSPA, LLM       awacs at ziskind.us
Attorney and Counselor-at-Law           http://ziskind.us
Economic Group Pension Services         http://egps.com
Actuaries and Employee Benefit Consultants

On 13.05.2010 13:24, N. Yaakov Ziskind wrote:
> I have 5 or 6 :-( different copies of a filesystem on various Linux
> boxen, all backups taken at different times, with different exclusions,
> and squirreled away. Now's the time to clean up my attic. I'd like
to
> merge them all into one big filesystem. When there are different copies
> of the same files, I'd like to keep the newest; I don't know what
else
> to do. My plan (assuming I'm going to retain 'path0' as the
surviving
> filesystem) goes like this:
> 
> rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-1 path0
> rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-2 path0
> rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-3 path0
> rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-4 path0
> rsync -azPv -u path-to-system-5 path0
> 
> and then rm -rf "path-to-system-?", and hope for the best.
> 
> What kind of disaster can I look forward to with this approach, and is
> there a better one?
It depends on WHAT and HOW MUCH.

When i had the same situation a few years back for my /usr/local/bin i 
choose a "master" machine and made that directory into a subversion 
repository and then on each of the other 2 machines i decided 
file-by-file what what was the "right(tm)" version to commit, revert, 
intergrate or delete.

For Backup-Purposes you could keep the backups and use a filedup-utility 
to hardlink identical files to reduce the space needed. That what you 
can at least always look back. And delete is a few years later. ;-)





Bis denn

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