[Box Backup] Overlay file system (was: BoxBackup services?)

[Ben Summers]

On 28 May 2006, at 17:13, Felix E. Klee wrote:

> At Sun, 28 May 2006 01:29:17 +0000 (GMT),
> Chris Wilson wrote:
>>> Is there any provider that offers access to a backup server which
>>> runs BoxBackup?
>>
>> I would gladly do so. Please contact me off-list to discuss your
>> needs.
>
> Well, there's a crux that I didn't mention: The files that I want to
> backup are part of an overlay file system.  This means: some files are
> private, others are shared (virtual server infrastructure):
>
>   http://www.escapebox.net/modus.html
>
> Naturally, I only want to backup the private files (ca. 50MB  
> compared to
> 2GB, fluctuating).  The problem is that, due to technical reasons,  
> it's
> not possible to mount all shared files into their own partition.
> There's a little tool, though, called "ismine" that tells one if a  
> file
> is private file or a shared file.
>
> Is it possible to have "boxbackup" use "ismine" to determine whether a
> file should be backed up or not?

It would be a quick modification to the code to do this, and you  
could use the existing infrastructure for file selection. (See the  
ExcludeList class.)

However, surely you know which bits of the file system you have  
modified and can therefore point bbackupd at those critical bits?

Ben