[BackupPC-users] Two suggestions for the documentation

[Erminio B. <ar...@ya...>]

Dear BackupPC-developers and users,

I have two suggestions to improve a little the already
very good documentation of BackupPC.

First one: identical files
--------------------------

The term "identical files" is often used, of course,
because it is the core of this system. But nowhere in
the documentation it is said that "two identical files
are only identical in the sense of their contents,
independently of their attributes (srwx, ACL, chflags,
and so on)."

I think such a warning should be added to the
documentation (of course, I know that BackupPC takes
perfectly note of the attributes as lons as the
external, not BackupPC-dependent, transfer mechanism
is able to do it).

Second one: workflow
--------------------

BackupPC could be used in a "non-standard" mode, e.g.
say to cumulate old backup/archives already existing
(on tape or on disk). In this case the use is
independent of the time (and the retain and the number
of logs etc.) scheduling. Of course you can start it
again and again from the web interface. 

But a clearly described workflow to do it manually (or
per batch files) should be mentioned in the
documentation. 

I had to partially extract the required information to
do it from the perl scripts and to imagine the
necessary parameters (at least one perl script is not
up-to-day in his internal description: see
BackupPC_dump wich is taking a poorly described
parameter -f). Other workflow questions remains open
for me: e.g. should I run BackupPC_nightly after each
BackupPC_dump/BackupPC_link?

Perhaps has the author all these workflow questions
already answered for himself in constructing the
system (perhaps in graphical form).


What do you think about?


Erminio

---------------------------------------------------
Erminio BARANZINI, Muehlemattstr. 53, CH-3007 Berne,
Switzerland, ar...@ya...
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