Ray,
The behavior you are seeing is expected for tar (and smb and ftp)
XferMethods. Incrementals don't detect deleted or renamed files. So if
you have a directory with lots of changes, incrementals will backup the new
files (and any prior files with recent mtimes), and the "view" of the
backup will grow to be the union of all new and previous files. A full
backup correctly captures the directory contents, so the process you see
starts over.
Using rsync is much preferred - all changes (specifically deleted files)
are detected during an incremental (well, not quite all changes - if you
change the contents of a file but don't change its meta data (eg: mtime,
size etc), then that won't be detected during an incremental).
Unfortunately BackupPC_restore isn't easy to use from the command line
since it requires a lot of information that is passed via a parameter file
(using similar syntax to config.pl).
How about you use BackupPC_tarCreate? It's easy to create a tar archive of
any set of directories or files from a specific backup, and then you can
use tar to extract it on the client.
Craig
On Mon, Aug 14, 2017 at 10:38 AM, Ray Frush <[email protected]>
wrote:
>
> Craig-
>
> Thanks for taking a look at this.
>
>
>
> On Sun, Aug 13, 2017 at 8:06 PM, Craig Barratt via BackupPC-users <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Ray,
>>
>> What is the XferMethod and backup schedule (ie, how often do you do
>> incrementals and fulls)? Which backup are you viewing (ie, how many
>> incrementals need to be merged to view it)? Are you running v3 or v4?
>>
>>
>
> We're running v4.1.3,
> For this host we're using the 'tar' backup method. The host doesn't
> support an rsync new enough to work with BackupPC.
>
> $Conf{XferMethod} = 'tar';
>
> Here's our schedule
>
> $Conf{FullPeriod} = '90.97';
> $Conf{IncrPeriod} = '0.97';
> $Conf{FillCycle} = 7;
> $Conf{FullKeepCnt} = [ 4,3,0,0,0,0];
>
>
> For this host, the last 'full' backup was number 72 taken on Aug-04.
> In this output, I count the number of lines of output for each backup for
> the directory in question. Normally, this directory appears to hold
> approximately 40000 files (+/- 10000), and there is a lot of churn month to
> month. However, BackupPC seems to think the directory just keeps growing.
> The file counts support the behavior we saw, and the the new Full backup
> seems to have temporarily reset the count to something approaching correct,
> but then the counts just keep incrementing.
>
> $ for i in $(ls /mnt/backups/BackupPC/pc/hostname/ | grep -v -E
> '[^0-9]'); do echo -n "BKP $i:"; /usr/local/BackupPC/bin/BackupPC_ls -h
> hostname -n $i -s / /dir/path | wc -l; done
> BKP 14:36503 (Filled)
> BKP 28:62162 (Filled)
> BKP 42:85323 (Filled)
> BKP 51:104152
> BKP 52:104998
> BKP 53:105337
> BKP 54:105379
> BKP 55:106075
> BKP 56:106912 (Filled)
> BKP 57:113966
> BKP 58:115212
> BKP 59:118045
> BKP 60:120110
> BKP 61:120955
> BKP 62:122617
> BKP 63:125500 (Filled)
> BKP 64:132740
> BKP 65:135597
> BKP 66:138578
> BKP 67:140102
> BKP 68:140899
> BKP 69:142810
> BKP 70:145427 (Filled)
> BKP 71:149962
> BKP 72:40163 (FULL)
> BKP 73:47590
> BKP 74:49129
> BKP 75:49931
> BKP 76:52125
> BKP 77:54851
> BKP 78:57530
> BKP 79:60417 (Filled)
> BKP 80:64111
> BKP 81:65563
> BKP 82:66360 (Filled)
>
>
>> Two options are to:
>>
>> - use BackupPC_ls so you can see the backup tree using the command
>> line
>> - look in the XferLOG files to figure out which files are in which
>> backup.
>>
>> Craig
>>
>
> Both of these are great pointers. Thanks.
>
> Question: Once I do find the file using the manual method, how best to
> trigger the restore. The "BackupPC_restore" command doesn't seem to ask
> for enough information ( like backup number) to specify the correct file
> version to restore.
>
> $ ./BackupPC_restore
>
> usage: ./BackupPC_restore [-p] [-v] <hostIP> <client> <reqFileName>
>
>
> --
> Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
>
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