Re: File Formats

Actually it does matter to me. I do not want to rely on a chain of reverse
diffs to reconstruct important files. My concern is that a disk error could
render reconstruction impossible. I would like every version to remain as a
self-contained snapshot. So, I want to use compression and snapshots only.

The documentation says that earlier states of files can be saved as copies
or diffs. However there does not appear to be a run-time option to create
copies. I looked at the python code in increment.py and it does not seem to
have an option to create copies for regular files.

Is there a way to force rdiff-backup to always create copies of earlier file
versions?

Thanks much!

> On 25.03.2021 09:29, [email protected] wrote:
> > I just heard about rdiff-backup and I'm planning how to 
> configure it.
> >
> > The documentation says:
> > "Earlier states of your files are saved just by 1) keeping 
> a copy of 
> > them,
> > 2) in diff form as produced by rdiff, or 3) as a gzipped 
> version of 1 or 2."
> >
> > I see the --no-compression option to disable compression. 
> However I do 
> > not see an option to produce copies of older files vs. 
> storing them in 
> > rdiff format. How is the file format for older files controlled?
> >
> > Thanks much!
> 
> 
> Hello and welcome!
> 
> I don't think it matters to you - it should be just a 
> description of how rdiff-backup handles file history internally.
> 
> --no-compression should disable compression of older files 
> when a newer snapshot is created. It's sometimes useful to 
> disable compression because gzip is rather CPU hungry and 
> depending on files it can make the backup take a long time.
> 
> All the best,
> Reio