[Discuss] rsnapshot vs. rdiff-backup

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Richard Pieri)]

Kent Borg wrote:
> Ah, so you are not talking about just backing up your directories and
> files, you are talking about backing up the snapshot history, too?

Not as such, no.

I'm talking about making snapshots as read-only versions of a file 
system at arbitrary points in time and running the backup system against 
them, and keeping all of the file system metadata in the process.

Retaining a history of snapshots is incidental to the process.

Using your Git tree as an example, if I were to take a snapshot of a 
tree and then run the backup against that snapshot then I won't have to 
worry about changes being pushed during the run. I'll get a copy of the 
file system (or the incremental or differential against it) at precisely 
that point in time.

Whether or not I keep that snapshot on the system? It depends. For some 
things, like system volumes and volumes dedicated to revision control 
systems, it makes no sense to keep snapshots around unless I'm about to 
make a major change like an OS upgrade and rolling back is an easier 
path to backing out the change than restoring from backup. For others, 
like user directories, it makes perfect sense to keep a few days worth 
of snapshots around.

-- 
Rich P.