Re: Using rsync to disk on the system being backed up?

On 2/15/23 14:33, EricZolf wrote:
> 
> 
> On February 15, 2023 7:41:25 PM UTC, [email protected] wrote:
>> On Wednesday, February 15, 2023 01:24:16 PM [email protected] wrote:
>>> rdiff-backup (rdiff is something different) actually uses the
>>> patching/delta approach of (lib)rsync also locally to store less data.
>>
>> I guess I should have given more context (or clarity) to my questions.
>>
>> Part of my question was intended to be: if I don't have rdiff-backup available
>> (for whatever reason), can I use fairly standard tools (e.g., patch) to
>> retrieve older versions that I've backed up.
> 
> Short answer: no.

And to expound upon that, even restoring the most recent version by copying a file from the mirror fully works only when the two filesystems are feature-compatible. As a fairly extreme example, if the archive is stored on a Microsoft Windows filesystem, copying the file will not recover the original permissions and other attributes the file might have had on a Linux filesystem. Since rdiff-backup stores those attributes in its own database, they will be recovered properly by a "restore" operation.

-- 
Bob Nichols     "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address.
                 Do NOT delete it.