Re: Determine whether archive is a full backup or a differential

Hi Dave,

there is no real difference between a full and a differential,
incremental or decremental backup.

In a catalogue, the information for each file has several possible status:
-  "full": all data and metadata for that file is saved in the backup
- "inode_only": only the metadata is saved
-  "not_saved": place holder for a file that has not changed
-  "delta": data containes a binary delta, metadata is saved/updated

A full backup is a backup for which all entries are "full".
A differential, incremental or decremental backup may contain other type
of entries, but may well also contain only "full" entries.

So it is technically not possible to know whether a full backup is
really a full backup or whether it is not a differential backup for
which all files under backup have changed and needed to be resaved.

On 24/11/2021 17:40, Dave Serls wrote:
> 
>  I thought that this information would be provided by -aheader but is
> not. This could be indicated by "user comment" I suppose.
> 
You can of course use the --user-comment to store such type of information.

Cheers,
Denis