On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 05:29:21PM -0600, Les Mikesell wrote:

> > you have x number of remote hosts, all running the same OS and presumably
> > have almost identical files (size, permissions etc)? and you want back one
> > up and then clone that backup for each of the other machines to avoid
> > transfering the data numerous times?
> > 
> > you should add the -H flag to cp or rsync to take hardlinks with:
> > 
> > rsync -aH /var/lib/backuppc/pc/host1/0 /var/lib/backuppc/pc/host2/0
> > cp -aH /var/lib/backuppc/pc/host1/0 /var/lib/backuppc/pc/host2/0
> 
> Since he is only copying one backup run there probably won't be any hard 
> links within the run and cp/rsync won't know or care about links to the 
> pool.  What you really need here is to make a tree of hardlinks instead 
> of a copy but I don't think any standard tools do that.  

> cp --help
[...]
  -l, --link                   link files instead of copying

So a cp -rl /var/lib/backuppc/pc/host1/0 /var/lib/backuppc/pc/host2/0
should do the trick.

Then you can trigger a full backup - the rsync will only transfer
changed files.

> But, you are going to remove the extra copy as soon as a new full run
> completes so the space probably doesn't matter. The only place I think
> it might go wrong is if backuppc hard-links matching files in the next
> run to the copy from the previous instead of the hash match in the
> pool.  If that's the case you will end up with files that persist
> under each PC's directories but never end up linked to the pool and
> thus to each other.

The base backup host1/0 should be complete (e.g. BackupPC_link should
have been run).

HTH,

Tino.

-- 
"What we nourish flourishes." - "Was wir nähren erblüht."

www.lichtkreis-chemnitz.de
www.craniosacralzentrum.de

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