Hi,

Les Mikesell wrote on 2008-07-27 15:38:36 -0500 [Re: [BackupPC-users] how to 
compare the active file system to the last backup]:
> > Emilie Ann Phillips wrote on 2008-07-27 13:34:13 -0400 [[BackupPC-users] 
> > how to compare the active file system to the last backup]:
> >> My system just crashed rather nastily and I would like to verify that
> >> fsck recovered everything properly.
> 
> If the parts you want to check aren't too big to do it visually, you 
> could just run another backup, then browse to a starting directory in 
> one of the backups and view the history link.  From there, you would 
> walk through all the subdirectories looking for files that exist in 
> earlier runs but show an empty box in the one following your crash.

hmm, or browse the XferLOG for the new backup. I can, however, think of two
reasons why you might not want to do that.

1. An incremental backup will only pick up files that have obviously changed.
   For XferMethod tar or smb that would be files with timestamps newer than
   the last backup. fsck will not change timestamps, I believe, so that would
   not help you.
   For XferMethod rsync(d), the other attributes would also be taken into
   account, but they should likewise be unchanged (except maybe for truncated
   files). Deleted (i.e. missing) files would however be picked up.

   A full backup would pick up all files, but then, I believe, browsing the
   history would not work, as there would be a version of each file available
   in the new backup.

2. You might not want a backup of the state you consider potentially corrupt
   in your backup history. If you actually find corruption, you'd risk
   restoring a corrupt file at some point in the future, and you'd
   waste disk space storing it. You could delete the backup as long as the
   next incremental has not yet run, but then I don't see the advantage in
   simplicity over 'tar -d' any longer.

On the other hand, doing a full backup would allow you to re-examine the state
of your files before and after the crash for as long as the backups are kept,
should you experience problems you think are related to the crash.

Regards,
Holger

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