Hi,

Les Mikesell wrote on 2009-05-19 11:12:25 -0500 [Re: [BackupPC-users] backup 
the backuppc pool with bacula]:
> [...] the newest version of rsync is supposed to handle the hardlinks more 
> efficiently.

reason suggests that this is an urban myth. The newest version of rsync
handles *large file lists* better, not *hardlinks*. To handle hardlinks
better, you would almost certainly need to create a temporary file (which
can easily be several *GB* in size in our cases). I somehow doubt any general
purpose tool would dare do that (let alone find a spot where it can - my /tmp
simply isn't large enough). The issue is that the temporary file will either
be very large or unneeded, and an algorithm able to handle extreme numbers of
hardlinks will probably be slow in the overwhelming majority of cases with
very few hardlinks.

>  You can always try that and see how long it takes.

That you can. Just remember that your space usage (and hardlink counts) will
grow over time. How does the time it takes grow in proportion to space and/or
hardlink counts? At some random point it will stop working. You may never
reach that point. But what if you do? Can you simply find another solution
then? How long can you keep your pool offline for the copy process? At what
point do you abort the copy process? How can you monitor its progress?

Just some things to think about ...

Regards,
Holger

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