Re: [BackupPC-users] Freeing up disk space (maybe with IncrFill)

[Matthias M. <mat...@gm...>]

Jason A. Spiro wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> To all developers and other contributors on this list:  Thank you for
> contributing to BackupPC.
> 
> My client's BackupPC server's 1TB backup-storage RAID array is almost
> out of space (96% full).  He's running BackupPC 3.1.0 on Ubuntu.  The
> server backs up perhaps a few dozen hosts.  It's set to keep at least
> one full backup and at least sixty incremental backups per host.
> 
> 1.  I guessed that IncrFill was a good way to save space:  this way
> only one full would be stored per machine.  Was I right?  Is IncrFill
> the best way to save space?
> 
> 2.  I enabled this a few hours ago and manually ran BackupPC_nightly
> but the server hasn't filled any incrementals.  Is there a reasonably
> easy way to force it to fill the incrementals?  (Otherwise I may just
> set it not to keep any incrementals:  I figure that should make
> BackupPC discard all of them, perhaps right after I reload the config
> file.)
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Jason Spiro
> 

You will find some hints within the documentation:
- BackupPC's CGI interface automatically fills incremental backups
- The default for $Conf{IncrFill} is off, since there is no need to fill
incremental backups.

Every time you save a backup you need the space for new files. BackupPC will
save space by storing identical files only once.
But if you fill a backup you will only create hardlinks within the backup to
unchanged files within prior backups.

br
Matthias

-- 
Don't Panic