Some issues with rdiff-backup-delete

Dieter Heußner via Any discussion of rdiff-backup <[email protected]> Thu, 22 Dec 2022 10:20:24 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.comp.sysutils.backup.rdiff-backup.general
Message-ID	<9555613.ag9G3TJQzC@hp15>

In the context of rdiff-backup the option „--remove-older-than timeInterval“ removes old
increment files thus freeing up space on backup media. A recommended timeInterval is
„52W“ which stands for „52 weeks“. After having run the rdiff-backup with this option, it is
not possible to restore a file back in time beyond the timeInterval.

To remove a file and all its associated history information from the rdiff-backup repository
you need to run the command rdiff-backup-delete. Apart from the option --dry-run“ you
have to specify the path which you want to be deleted. NEVER delete manually a file from
the rdiff-backup repository.

My experiences and a question:

Running some tests with rdiff-backup-delete I was surprised that the deletion of a single
file (including all its associated history information) takes quite a lot of time (several
minutes).

There are some reasons for the „unusual“ amount of time:
1. The speed of your computer: A lot of *.gz files must be extracted, the history
information for the file to be deleted must also be dropped, and new *.gz files be
constructed to preserve the integrity of the repository
2. The total number of these *.gz files
3. The speed of your backup media

My first test with rdiff-backup-delete was with a single file.

In the next test I specified wildcards, e.g.
rdiff-backup-delete /long/directory/path/abc.*
It took roughly the same amount of time as above (single file). This is understandable
because opening and closing *.gz files must be done nevertheless (and this contributes
mainly to the time to proceed).

However I have a use case for which I did not find a proper solution yet. Maybe somebody
can point me to a practical solution.

In the rdiff-backup repository I have a lot of files of which the basenames end on „.~xyz“
(dot tilde string "xyz"), but these files are spread across many, many, many different
directories in the repository.

Is there a way to delete all the files with a *single* rdiff-backup-delete command. Please
note that the different directories may have different nesting levels.

If there is not yet a practical solution, one had to find the names of all directories in which
the given files reside, and run the deletion job for every directory separately, one after the
other. If a single run takes /n/ minutes (roughly), and if there were /m/ different
directories, the total amount of deleting the selected files would be /m/ times /n/ minutes.

The rdiff-backup-delete tool is indispensable because an administrator must always be
able to safely delete files (and associated history information) from the rdiff-backup
repository.

I'm not arguing against rdiff-backup-delete, but I'd appreciate a practical way for deleting
files in *one single* rdiff-backup-delete run.

Could somebody point me to such a solution, please?
Thank you very much in advance.

Best regards
Dieter

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