[Box Backup] Client on laptop questions/suggestions

[John Pybus]

Ben Summers wrote:
> 
> You should note that the server currently stores full copes of each 
> version of a file, even if it was uploaded using the rsync-like feature. 
> At the moment, transport efficiency has been my greatest concern (as 
> bandwidth is more expensive than discs), however, it's due to be 
> addressed soon, along with marks and archive options (the biggest 
> current deficiency of the system).

OK.

> How about I add a feature which runs a script before every potential 
> sync, and if the script says "no" doesn't do the sync? Or, it returns 
> "now" to do it now, or a number of seconds to wait before considering a 
> sync again.

That sounds ideal.  Another thing that occurs to me with laptop use, you 
often don't want anything touching disc when on battery, so it would be 
better for this script to get a chance to say no before directories are 
scanned for changes.

> If you do this, you will lose the RAM based database of the states of 
> directories on the server. This means that when it connects again, it 
> will read the contents of every directory on the server, rather than 
> just the ones it knows have changed. This may not be a problem for you.
> 
> I do mean to write some code to serialise this state to disc, and then 
> have a daemon-less mode for snapshot syncs. Not difficult, it's even 
> written with this in mind. However, no-one's requested it yet, and I 
> haven't needed it.

For now I'll leave bbackupd running and see how much impact it actually 
has (for starters just running boxbackup on my own laptop), but the 
option to save to disc would be good.

John