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I have a directory with 14G that I backup to my local server with rdiff-backup. I'm backing up for like three months now.

I recently ran rdiff-backup --remove-older-than 8B /backup/directory to free some space. The problem is, when I run rdiff-backup -l --list-increment-sizes /backup/directory, it shows that my backup directory is 92.8G.

Question: How can I make it be 14G again? Do I have to delete it and make a full backup?

EDIT: rdiff-backup -l --list-increment-sizes /backup/directory:

        Time                       Size        Cumulative size
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mon Oct  8 01:00:09 2018         93.2 GB           93.2 GB   (current mirror)
Sun Oct  7 01:00:08 2018         21.6 MB           93.2 GB
Sat Oct  6 01:00:09 2018         65.3 MB           93.3 GB
Fri Oct  5 01:00:07 2018         48.0 MB           93.3 GB
Thu Oct  4 01:00:08 2018         35.6 MB           93.3 GB
Tue Oct  2 09:30:24 2018         73.1 MB           93.4 GB
Mon Oct  1 01:00:08 2018         47.7 MB           93.5 GB
Sun Sep 30 01:00:08 2018         19.4 MB           93.5 GB
Sat Sep 29 01:00:07 2018         22.7 MB           93.5 GB
Fri Sep 28 01:00:09 2018         51.7 MB           93.5 GB
Thu Sep 27 01:00:07 2018         40.2 MB           93.6 GB
Wed Sep 26 01:00:09 2018         42.0 MB           93.6 GB
Tue Sep 25 01:00:09 2018         30.8 MB           93.7 GB
Mon Sep 24 01:00:07 2018         39.1 MB           93.7 GB
Sun Sep 23 01:00:07 2018         35.1 MB           93.7 GB
Sat Sep 22 01:00:07 2018         22.4 MB           93.7 GB
Fri Sep 21 01:00:07 2018         39.0 MB           93.8 GB
Thu Sep 20 01:00:06 2018         38.7 MB           93.8 GB
Wed Sep 19 01:00:07 2018         30.9 MB           93.9 GB
Tue Sep 18 01:00:07 2018         37.3 MB           93.9 GB
Mon Sep 17 01:00:06 2018         97.4 MB           94.0 GB
Sun Sep 16 01:00:16 2018         20.3 MB           94.0 GB
Sat Sep 15 01:00:07 2018          112 MB           94.1 GB
Fri Sep 14 01:00:08 2018         37.4 MB           94.2 GB
Thu Sep 13 08:21:01 2018         37.9 MB           94.2 GB
Wed Sep 12 01:00:07 2018         33.1 MB           94.2 GB
Tue Sep 11 01:00:06 2018          122 MB           94.3 GB
Mon Sep 10 04:00:07 2018         56.0 MB           94.4 GB
Sun Sep  9 04:00:06 2018          266 MB           94.7 GB
Sat Sep  8 04:00:05 2018         21.5 MB           94.7 GB
Fri Sep  7 04:00:06 2018         25.4 MB           94.7 GB
Thu Sep  6 04:00:08 2018         52.2 MB           94.8 GB
Wed Sep  5 04:00:06 2018         37.6 MB           94.8 GB
Asdra
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    Actually including the output from rdiff-backup would be useful, it's unclear how many incremental backups you have to explain the size you're getting. – bodgit Oct 05 '18 at 08:52

3 Answers3

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You're making the assumption that your backup is only ever going to be the same size as the source; if you only ever want that then just use cp or rsync, rdiff-backup doesn't seem the right tool for you. rdiff-backup maintains multiple backups (both full and incremental) so that you can rollback your data to a particular point in time instead of only being able to revert to the last known copy.

Imagine the scenario in that you lost or corrupted some file but a backup has been made since, your single backup would only have the corrupted copy or nothing at all.

If that 14 GB changes a lot between backups then unfortunately it's going to create large deltas.

bodgit
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  • Thank you for your answer. I added my list of increments in the original post. As you can see, the 90G+ comes from before I used --remove-older-than, so it should be 14G (I think). When I du -lhs the folder, it shows 13G. – Asdra Oct 08 '18 at 12:13
  • The reason I'm asking about this specific directory is because all the other ones decreased close to the original size, except this one. – Asdra Oct 08 '18 at 12:22
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First number in the second column of list-increment-sizes output is always equal to size of source data (except possible --excludes). If it says "93Gb" then your source must be indeed at least 93Gb and not 14Gb like you saying. There might be 3 explanations of the observed disagreements over your expectations and actual measurements:

  1. There are hidden files in your data;
  2. There are sparse files among your data and rdiff-backup does not handle them efficiently (that's a known issue);
  3. your backup got corrupted very badly and for some reason rdiff-backup not complaining about it. rdiff-backup --compare-full might find such inconsistencies. But it is very unlikely an issue since rdiff-backup is a mature and stable tool.
legolegs
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  • I fixed the directory by manually removing a file/directory that got corrupted when backing up. Don't know why it stayed there even after rerunning the backup. – Asdra Aug 01 '19 at 20:24
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The last release of rdiff-backup was in 2009. Consider using other backup software as borg-backup or restic.

Txeyen
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    That's not really answering the question. Also, just because some software was last released X years ago doesn't mean it doesn't work. – bodgit Oct 05 '18 at 08:44
  • The project became active again in 2020, and it's still being maintained as of 2022. – mhsmith Sep 17 '22 at 11:10