Hi,

Peter Walter wrote on 2009-06-03 16:15:37 -0400 [Re: [BackupPC-users] Backing 
up a BackupPC server]:
> [...]
> My understanding is that, if it were not for the 
> hardlinks, that rsync transfers to another server would be more 
> feasible;

right.

> that processing the hardlinks requires significant cpu 
> resources, memory resources, and that access times are very slow, 

Memory: yes. CPU: I don't think so. Access times very slow? Well, the inodes
referenced from one directory are probably scattered all over the place, so
traversing the file tree (e.g. "find $TopDir -ls") is probably slower than
in "normal" directories. Or do you mean swapping slows down memory accesses
by several orders of magnitude?

> compared to processing ordinary files. Is my understanding correct? If 
> so, then what I would think of doing is (a) shutting down backuppc (b) 
> creating a "dump" file containing the hardlink metadata (c) backing up 
> the pooled files and the dump file using rsync (d) restarting backuppc. 
> I really don't need a live, working copy of the backuppc file system - 
> just a way to recreate it from a backup if necessary, using an "undump" 
> program that recreated the hardlinks from the dump file. Is this 
> approach feasible?

Yes. I'm just not certain how you would test it. You can undoubtedly
restore your pool to a new location, but apart from browsing a few random
files, how would you verify it? Maybe create a new "dump" and compare the
two ...

Have you got the resources to try this? I believe I've got most of the code
we'd need. I'd just need to take it apart ...

Regards,
Holger

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