Beware rdiff-backup. It certainly does turn rsync (not a backup program) into a backup program.
However, I used rdiff-backup in the past and it can be a bit problematic. If I remember correctly, every “snapshot” you keep in rdiff-backup uses as many inodes as the thing you are backing up. (Because every “file” in the snapshot is either a file or a hard link to an identical version of that file in another snapshot.) So this can be a problem if you store many snapshots of many files.
But it does make rsync a backup solution; a snapshot or a redundant copy is very useful, but it’s not a backup.
(OTOH, rsync is still wonderful for large transfers.)
tal@olio.cafe 2 weeks ago
I think that you may be thinking of
rsnapshotrather thanrdiff-backupwhich has that behavior; both usersync.But I’m not sure why you’d be concerned about this behavior.
Are you worried about inode exhaustion on the destination filesystem?
koala@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Huh, I think you’re right.
Before discovering ZFS, my previous backup solution was rdiff-backup. I have memories of it being problematic for me, but I may be wrong in my remembering of why it caused problems.