[Box Backup] Handling of changed backup configuration

[Ben Summers]

On 18 Apr 2004, at 14:48, rprice@freeshell.org wrote:

> [
>
> I initially botched my configuration because I didn't really understand
> how to exclude directories.
>
> I have my Oracle files under my /home directory in /home/oracle. I had
> initially thought you had to create a new file path to make it exclude
> things, so I created an Oracle file path and then excluded 
> /home/oracle,
> but did not include anything.
>
> The backup software correctly started to backup /home/oracle.
>
> I fixed the config problem halfway, and restarted the backup daemon 
> (I'm
> new and didn't know how to make it refresh).

xargs kill -HUP < /var/run/bbackupd.pid

   -- but it may take a while to get round to reloading it, as it will 
wait until the sync is over. So you would have had to forcibly kill in 
in this case. Yes, I know, I'm going to change this.

>
> I asked Ben if the unwanted Oracle stuff would go away on it's own, or
> what would happen, since I didn't want it wasting space on his server.
>
> ]
>
> Okay, the oracle deletion worked flawlessly, it did exactly what you
> said.... Good Job! The stuff is deleted, but still there, so I assume 
> it
> will go away on it's own over time.

Yes. After you hit the soft limit on the account, the housekeeping 
process will start to remove it.

>
> However the Oracle top level item that I created incorrectly is still
> there. Should it go away on it's own as well, it's completely gone from
> my configuration file now?

Now this, I must confess, is something I've yet to do. I need to remove 
removed locations from the store. I think I've been delaying because I 
feel I should wait a day or so to make sure that the adminstrator 
really wanted to do it, and that's a more complex thing to do.

>
> Do you think people need a way to purposely delete backups? Say they
> backed up something they really, really, don't want a copy of? You 
> seem to
> have thought about this carefully what's your opinion? (Something like 
> the
> Sarbanes-Oxely stuff in the USA).
>
> I can see that something like that could really cause problems, but may
> also be useful if people are managing their own backups (for instance
> email retention laws where you probably want it to disappear on the 
> crack
> of midnight the first day you can delete it). I also get the impression
> you need to be able to hold certain items back from deletion sort of
> indefinitely say if the court has ordered you to keep it for some 
> reason.

I have been more interesting in preserving data than destroying it, so 
controlled deletion didn't really occur to me. But you're right, it is 
useful.

There does need to be a way of retaining data more carefully. When I 
add the "mark" feature, you'll be able to specify how many marked files 
should exist, so you could mark weekly, and say you want to keep at 
least 6 weeks of marked files.

>
> Do you think a config item for max retention time might be useful?

Sounds a sensible start.

>  Along
> with a config item to prevent something from getting deleted under any
> circumstances?

I will try and come up with a sensible suggestion and post to the list 
for feedback. I think the suggestion above will be sufficient for 
keeping files -- only old and delete files get removed from the store, 
never files which correspond to files on the client disc.

>
> Is there some way to list how much space you are allowed to have on the
> drive, along with how much you are using from the backup query client?

I will add a command to bbackupquery -- I always use bbstoreaccounts on 
the server to find out such things, but this is not possible if you 
don't have that access to the server.

Ben