Re: convert old full + differentials into new full

On 16/04/2021 20:39, Denis Corbin wrote:
> There is no best solution for all cases, it always depends on the
> context/environment/"data life".

By the way, I use Manuel Iglesias' DAR_automatic_backup.sh script to
deal with this issue. Although it doesn't do any backup combining, it
does decide whether to take a new incremental or to go back one or more
steps and take a new incremental from that point, or even to take a new
full backup and start again. All automatic decisions depending on how
much stuff has changed since the various incrementals.

It works well for me - I have been using it for many years and it mostly
maintains between 1 and 4 incrementals at any time. The only thing is
that because it sometimes decides to delete a lot of backups and create
a new full backup or a new big incremental, which can take days (and can
fail of course), I archive the previous backups until the run has
completed so I am not left with no backup during the time this is
happening. It also depends on dar_manager, which needs a LOT of memory
when it runs.

As my backups end up dependent for quite a long time on an old full
backup, I also do periodic automatic tests to check the integrity of the
backup set - no point discovering too late that the original full backup
got corrupted some time in the last 3 years!