SuggestedFeatures

From RdiffBackupWiki

This page is for discussion and hammering out of some features suggested by users of rdiff-backup. Feel free to "vote" for a feature by editing one of the linked pages below and saying why you would like it also.

Before you add a new feature, it may be a good idea to post it to the rdiff-backup mailing list, to make sure it is practical and well-conceived. Once discussion has died down you can put the (possibly revised) proposal below.

Current feature suggestions

• BackupLevels - backup levels as found in dump
• IgnoreFiles - neither mirror nor exclude files
• MetadataDiddling - options to edit/rebuild the metadata and archive directory
• DryRun - --dry-run switch says what will happen without doing it
• SparseFiles - handle sparse files well
• DeleteIntermediate - Remove intermediate backups, retaining older ones
• DeleteEnoughToFinish - Remove enough old data to finish current backup
• IgnoreFileByType - Enable ignoring files according to their `file` attributes, for example, don't backup binary files
• IgnoreFileWithExtendedAttribute - Enable ignoring files with the `d` extended attribute set (like dump)
• DetectMoves - Detect file moves
• RemoveSpecifiedFiles - --remove Removes specified files from rdiff-backup archive
• RestoreChanged - Allow -r and --list-changed-since switches to be used together
• RobustErrorHandling - Recovers automatically after a previous failed backup
• ContinueFailedRestore - When restoring, copy files only if needed
• NFSmountCheck - Ensure correctly mounted file system
• TimeWarn - warn the user if the clocks on the client and server are badly out of sync.
• AtimeRestore - restore a file's atime after backup
• Psyco - use the Psyco JIT compiler to speed things up
• UpdateErrorRetry - Retry to copy files with update error later
• RemoveOlderThanAllowsSubdirectories - argument to --remove-older-than can specifiy a subdirectory
• IncludeExcludeMountTypeOptions - add option to include or exclude mount types, e.g. nfs. (This Wiki page includes a patch to support this feature on BSD)
• FileSpecOrder - add option to indicate the order in which include/exclude options will be processed
• BackupFromRsyncd - Allow rdiff-backup to get snapshot from an rsyncd daemon
• FollowSymlinks - don't dump symlinks; dump the files they point to
• ListIncrementChanges - Display changed files on a per-increment basis
• FineGrainedGlobals - Options to provide fine-grained control over the global configuration
• FreeBSDUnionFSWhiteouts - Better support for whiteouts on FreeBSD's UnionFS
• PreserveNTFSReparsePoints - Actually preserve NTFS reparse points during backup instead of skipping over them
• FullFileCompare - verify backup like with rsync --checksum
• FilenamesConversion - convert files to encoding used on target system
• DontCompressSmallFiles - compress only large enough files
• ModifyWindowOption - add option like rsync's "--modify-window=NUM compare mod-times with reduced accuracy"
• BackupOnlyOnChange - add option to ignore backups runs that actually don't backup anything because nothing changed
• RememberArguments - add option to reuse remembered arguments from the first run.
• Resume - add option to resume broken transfer

Existing solutions, need testing

• WebFrontEnd - A full web front end should be trivial.
• MacMetadata - Besides resource forks, which 0.13.x supports, add creator and type fields.
• RetainAtLeast - --retain-at-least argument for safety when using --remove-older-than
• UntrustedTarget - Already done. See http://www.nongnu.org/duplicity/ or BackupToEncfsAcrossSshfs
• ForceCharacterEncoding - When backing up on OS X 10.4, with case insensitive HFS+, all non-lowercase characters are escaped, using 4 characters, causing long pathnames to become too long for the file system (or rdiff-backup) to handle. This shouldn't be necessary when copying from and to the same type of file system.
• ExcludeIfPresent - Exclude a directory if a particular file is present.
• NativeWindowsPort - Run under native Win32 and handle NT ACLs, attributes and streams