On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 06:25:44PM -0800, johan beisser wrote: > For a little while, I've had a project on my plate to create a simple > backup system that'd use rsync to mirror the directory for easy > access, and then have versions going back X-months that can be > archived to tape, etc, easily. > > A simple queryable DB to keep track of files in not only the archived > files, but also the versions on the backup hardware, and the contents > of the archival tape at the same time. > > Details are not well fleshed out beyond this, and I never really got > started on coding it up. >
Some type of version control system. It would be great to be able to say "give me the tarball for December 23, 2005" and have it pull the diffs together to do that. Probably have to tie into a SQL database. > >As long as the archive format that it tells tar to use is compatible > >with whatever version of tar you go to use in 20 years; but that's > >another topic. > > I don't think the tar(1) format has changed much in the last 20 years, > and it seems unlikely that the IEEE will redefine it again anytime > soon. For what it's worth, modern versions of tar(1) should handle > previously defined versions of it. > Gnu-tar has the gnu format right now but the info pages on Debian says that they will be changing to the POSIX format. It will also do oldgnu, v7, and ustar. Gnu format is based on 1988 IEEE, POSIX is based on 2000 IEEE. Note that in OpenBSD's pax(1) doesn't mention this newer POSIX format which is supposed to eliminate the limitations (e.g. file-name length) of ustar. Doug.
