sometimes my backups are not consistent. rsync / samba to blame?
some of my backups go as follows:
windows scheduled job backups data to linux via rdiff / rsync [ depending on the case ].
if needed linux runs rdiff to create backup of the data
rsync [run on few machines ] copies the data to it’s final destination
consistency of data is checked again with rdiff –verify
from time to time i’ve been getting inconsistent backups [good to know before you need to recover!] and i’ve been searching for the cause. apparently sometimes files do not change in size and their modify date stays same, yet change date differs:
host:/root# stat "/mnt/backup/file.xls" File: `/mnt/backup/file.xls' Size: 176640 Blocks: 360 IO Block: 4096 regular file Device: 80ah/2058d Inode: 36814865 Links: 1 Access: (0666/-rw-rw-rw-) Uid: ( 1019/ninja-szctapp0) Gid: ( 1019/ninja-stoback0) Access: 2010-06-15 08:39:26.000000000 +0000 Modify: 2010-03-24 08:11:59.000000000 +0000 Change: 2010-06-09 09:44:53.000000000 +0000 host:/root# stat "/mnt/external/file.xls" File: `/mnt/external/file.xls' Size: 176640 Blocks: 360 IO Block: 4096 regular file Device: 700h/1792d Inode: 30466647 Links: 1 Access: (0666/-rw-rw-rw-) Uid: ( 1019/ninja-szctapp0) Gid: ( 1019/ninja-stoback0) Access: 2010-04-05 18:16:41.000000000 +0000 Modify: 2010-03-24 08:11:59.000000000 +0000 Change: 2010-04-05 18:16:41.000000000 +0000
so i’ve put in samba config in each share section
dos filetimes = Yes
naively thinking it’ll sort my problems. we will see. alternatively i can use –checksum option of rsync but that will slow backup process quite significantly.