Steve wrote: > I am not a programmer, just a dumb user that thinks the whole thing is > kinda magic. So perhaps this is a stupid question. But since > BackupPc somehow knows where all the files are and what is linked to > what etc. why can't there be a button in the CGI interface that > instead of "restore", says something like, "as of the last inc or > whatever, make a perfect copy of what i want over here" and just let > that replicate the pc directories and pool and everything over to the > backup, offsite, or external drive?
The problem is that there is no good mechanism to find the "other" names that are hardlinked together. Normally you don't need to know - except when you are trying to copy the whole thing maintaining consistency. The not-so-good way to do it is to build a table of names and inode numbers for the whole tree and link the names with matching inodes as they are copied. As you may have noticed, this doesn't scale very well. > Steve > P.S. I have been using this software for about 6 months, love it. But > still have not succeeded in backing IT up without a crash. Have tried > cp -dpr and also rsync with -H but both bombed out with "too many hard > links" errors. If I could get this backed up i'd say it was the > perfect backup solution. Rsync 3.x with plenty of RAM on both systems might have a chance. But assuming you put the backup archive on its own partition, you can unmount it and use some form of image copy of the raw device (dd to another matching disk, dd to a file, or over ssh to a file or device on another machine, etc.) Clonezilla would probably work if you don't mind rebooting from a CD while the copy is made - it will offer to copy to another local disk or to an image with various forms of network access (cifs/nfs/sshfs) which you can restore on another machine the same way - or just save in case you need it later. Or, use a raid mirror that you break periodically and rotate drives. I've described my approach several times. -- Les Mikesell lesmikes...@gmail.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/