On Tue, Aug 30, 2005 at 01:15:48PM -0400, Guy Dallaire wrote:
> 2005/8/30, Graeme Humphries <graeme.humphries AT vcom DOT com>:
> > Guy Dallaire wrote:
> > 
> > >>Perhaps the problem DLE has lots of hard links?
> > >>
> > >>
> > >Hard Links ????
> > >
> > >
> > As opposed to symbolic links. You'll probably want to read up at
> > Wikipedia on the two if you haven't heard about them before:
> > 
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_link
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link
> > 
> > Hard linking is fairly depricated these days AFAIK, but it's still used
> > in certain circumstances.
> > 
> 
> Yes, thanks. I know about hard links. But how would it impact the size
> or performance of my backups ? And is there a way to find the number
> of HARD links ?

When you hit a file with multiple links, two possibilities exist,
archive a copy for this and every linked directory entry tar encounters
for this file (increasing the archive size and causing unlinked restores)
or try to find the other links and see if they have already been archived.
The way to find other links is extremely slow.  Think running a separate
"find" for every single multiple link.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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