On Tue, Jun 02, 2009 at 06:27:35AM -0400, Peter Walter wrote: > As a Linux newbie, I have only a partial understanding of the technology > underlying Linux and BackupPC, but I get the impression that the problem > with a rsync-like solution is that processing hardlinks is very > expensive in terms of cpu time and memory resources. This may be a > stupid question, but, if hardlinks are the problem, has any thought been > given to adding to BackupPC an option to use some form of database > (text, SQL or otherwise) to associate hashes to files, instead? It seems > to me that using hardlinks is in fact using that feature of the file > system *as* a database, a use that does not appear to be optimal ... if > I have misunderstood, please educate me :-)
An SQL approach would be rather complicated because it would have to support a directory structure. We would end up with ... a filesystem! The nice thing about using hardlinks is that the operating system keeps track of the link count and we can use that link count to check for superfluous files. This might be doable in a database as well, but we'd have to keep a file system and a database in sync. Doable, but error-prone. With the current design, there is only a file system. Tino, not doing backups of the pool, but archiving hosts to tape. -- "What we nourish flourishes." - "Was wir nähren erblüht." www.lichtkreis-chemnitz.de www.craniosacralzentrum.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ OpenSolaris 2009.06 is a cutting edge operating system for enterprises looking to deploy the next generation of Solaris that includes the latest innovations from Sun and the OpenSource community. Download a copy and enjoy capabilities such as Networking, Storage and Virtualization. Go to: http://p.sf.net/sfu/opensolaris-get _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list [email protected] List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
