Thomas Birnthaler wrote at about 11:29:27 +0100 on Friday, January 9, 2009:
 > A lot of thank to everybody which answered my questions
 > which have been asked a lot of times, sorry :-(.
 > 
 > I've learned from your answers that my model of BackupPC storage of full and 
 > incremental backups was too weak and that it's too dangerous to delete 
 > backups by hand. So we won't do that.
 > 
 > The script http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net/How+to+delete+backups for 
 > deleting you mentioned I already found. But it deleted full + all dependant 
 > incremental backups which wasn't what we wanted.
 > 
 > Some wanted to know, what were the reasons for my question. So here we are:
 > 
 > 1. Problem: Accidential backup of huge files and directories (e.g. 
 > DVD-Images, 
 > backups done by a second tool we haven't been told) because some users do 
 > things they shouldn't do. These fill up the BackupPC backup-Space and it 
 > doesn't make any sense to keep them. In one case we reached the limit of 95% 
 > and BackupPC didn't do any backups then (which is a good behaviour!).
 > 
 > True, this is a configuration problem! But if you detect it after the backup 
 > happened, how do you free the space then? My solution was to set the file 
 > size to zero by hand, but keep all the hardlinks. This is manageable for 
 > some 
 > files, but not very easy for 100 or more.
 > 
I have written a program that allows you to delete individual files
from 1 or more incremental or full backups -- it properly takes care
of all the inheritance from level n to level n+1 etc. incremental
backups. This should allow you to transparently delete just the
offending files or directories/

The program has been posted to the mailing list -- it's called
BackupPC_deleteFiles.pl

It was written for exactly the scenario you envisioned -- mistaken
backups of large files -- and it allows you to delete those without
eliminating the entire backup (which would seem to me to be foolishly
throwing out the baby with the bathwater).

 > 2. Problem: Incremental backups take much longer time than full backups 
 > (weekly full and daily incremental) on two of the networks we manage.
 > 
 > Some answered that this should not happen. But some answered that this could 
 > happen depending on machine, memory, network and so on. So no real answer to 
 > that, we have to investigate it further. If we find a reason for that 
 > problem, I will post it.
 > 
I didn't see anyone confirming that the multi-X slowdown for
incrementals vs. fulls is possible. At most, I saw someone saying that
in certain circumstances an incremental could take as long as a
full. (I'm just summarizing what I believe I saw in the thread unless
you have had personal communications otherwise).

 > Again, answers from all of you were very helpful!
 > 
 > Thomas Birnthaler
 > -- 
 > OSTC Open Source Training and Consulting GmbH / HRB Nuernberg 20032
 > tel +49 911-3474544 / fax +49 911-1806277 / http://www.ostc.de
 > Delsenbachweg 32 / D-90425 Nuernberg / Geschaeftsfuehrung:
 > Thomas Birnthaler / +49 171-3047465 / tb AT ostc DOT de / pgp 0xFEE7EB4C
 > Hermann Gottschalk / +49 173-3600680 / hg AT ostc DOT de / pgp 0x0B2D8EEA
 > 
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