backup systems. (Use Amanda!!)

[warlord at MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)]

Derek Martin <blu at sophic.org> writes:

> Yes, I get that, but I don't see how you can use the output of rpm -V
> to /reasonably/ generate your exclusion list.  All you will get from it
> is #2.  What you need is all files which are not #1 and not #2.
> 
> The only way I can see to use RPM to generate this exclusion list is
> to traverse the entire filesystem tree, run rpm -qf on every single
> file to determine if it is in the rpm database, and add all of those
> that are in the database to an exclusion list.  Then, run rpm -Va,
> save the output to a temp file, and process it to remove any file
> found in it from the exclusion list.

Um, 'rpm -qal' will list every file in the RPM database, without
having to traverse the filesystem.

> > On the other hand, simply excluding /bin, /usr, /lib, /dev, /proc, and 
> > whatnot, is certainly easier. When you exclude /usr, though, you'd want 
> > to make sure to re-include /usr/local. 
> 
> I definitely agree.  But, because I have an irrepressible interest in
> such academic arguments, if someone can come up with a substantially
> more efficient way to do what Derek wants, I'd definitely like to see
> it.  From a space efficiency perspective, his idea is, I think, ideal
> (so long as you are sure to also not back up files which have already
> been backed up, which I don't believe he explicitly stated, but
> probably assumed)...

Well, that's sort of the idea behind "full" and "incremental" backups.
I just want to limit the content of the "full" backup.

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available