Another way to think about it (which I always find makes the most sense as
to why the programmers that be wrote it that way) is that in reality, all
savetimes get translated into nsavetime, which is seconds since 1970 or
something along those lines.

Therefore, saying "savetime<=1 week ago" is actually saying "savetime is
less than the number of seconds that had elapsed since 1970, 1 week ago".
When expressed in nsavetime, the <, >, etc., make sense mathematically.

Cheers,

Preston.

On 5/8/06, Darren Dunham <ddunham AT taos DOT com> wrote:

> /usr/sbin/mminfo -o t -q "pool=Monthly, savetime>=182 days ago,
location=L700" -r volume | sort -u
>
> Now I have used a Relative savetime of "26 weeks ago", "6 months ago"
and so on.
>
> They all more or less report the same list of vols for (which is good),
> but in fact, the list is reporting volumes that are less than 6 months
old!
> I am even getting a list of vols that are only a couple of weeks old.

Right.  The 'savetime' is when the backup happened.  If that time is
greater than some point in the past, then the backup is more recent than
that point.  If you want older backups you want '<'.

> Now if I transpose the ">" (Greater Than) symbol, to "<" (Less Than),
> I get a lot closer to the list of vols required.

Good.

> So, after getting another person to examine the above query and
> checking I haven't got dyslexic with my "<" or ">" symbols,
> we have come to the conclusion that there is a problem with mminfo.

Don't think of the statement as "more than six months ago".  Think
instead "saved later than a point in time six months ago".

--
Darren Dunham                                           ddunham AT taos DOT com
Senior Technical Consultant         TAOS            http://www.taos.com/
Got some Dr Pepper?                           San Francisco, CA bay area
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