On Sun, 12 Aug 2018 13:15:05 +0200, A. Dumas wrote:

> Er, not what I'd expect. If it fails the first time, why should it
> succeed the second time? What options do you use that makes rsync
> replace files with directories? (Or do I misunderstand, do you mean that
> it replaces on the first run?)
>
I think so. When rsync gets to the file, it realises what it last backed
up as a file is now a directory, so it replaces the file with the
directory and its contents.

There is no communication between backup runs apart from what it gleans
by comparing the source disk and the backup one, so rsync does exactly
what you'd expect if you keep two or more generations of backups: each
backup sweeps up all the changes since the backup disk was last used as
the backup store.

Similarly, you can back up several hosts to the same backup disk: for
each host you just back up / to /mnt/backupdisk/hostname to get a set of
backups, each in the form of a directory tree with 'hostname' as its root.

Apart from that tweak, I never do anything to a backup disk apart from
retrieving any lost files from it.


--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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