Hi,

Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote on 2008-07-16 11:42:23 -0500 [Re: 
[BackupPC-users] expiring disabled host's backups?]:
> On 07/16 06:13 , Tino Schwarze wrote:
> > [...]
> > Now I would like to expire the old backups from that host.
> > I didn't want to just remove the directories or would that be the
> > easiest way - deleting the directories and the appropiate lines from the
> > backups file as well?
> 
> This wiki page gives a script (and patch which should be applied to it)
> which is suggested for deleting backups.
> 
> http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net/How+to+delete+backups

from memory, that was for deleting individual backups, not a complete host.

> You *can* generally get away with just deleting /var/lib/backuppc/pc; and
> letting the BackupPC_nightly job take care of deleting the hardlinks.

That is what I would suggest, or rather deleting /var/lib/backuppc/pc/$host
as you probably meant, which is most simply accomplished by moving it to
/var/lib/backuppc/trash and letting TrashClean take care of it. Deleting files
can be very time consuming :).

> I believe this has been recommended against; tho I can't remember the
> specifics of why. If someone would care to refresh my memory it would be
> appreciated.

I think it was recommended against deleting individual backups or parts of
backups for a host by hand because things can go wrong. Deleting a complete
host should be less of a problem, because there are no interdependencies
between hosts.

> By and large, it may be safest to shut down backuppc when you do this; just
> to make sure nothing is going on while you're deleting files.

You might as well remove the host from the hosts file and reload the server
configuration first. You'll need to do that at some point anyway. It's rather
unlikely there are any pending backups or link commands for the host, I
guess :). I can't imagine anything worse happening than your 'rm' running
parallel with BackupPC_nightly, which might cause BackupPC_nightly to miss
some files that could be removed from the pool in this run.

Choosing a time when BackupPC is unlikely to do anything (backups or nightly)
is a good idea, though, to avoid slowing things down unnecessarily.

Regards,
Holger

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/
_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
BackupPC-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
List:    https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
Wiki:    http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net
Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/