[Box Backup] machinereadble output bbackupquery - help needed

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Pete,

On Thu, 16 Oct 2008, Peter Jalajas, GigaLock Backup Services wrote:

> While you're poking around in there, would it be reasonably possible
> to resolve this issue:
> From http://www.boxbackup.org/trac/wiki/FeatureRequests
> Server-side Statistics
> Add a server-side "bbstoreaccounts info" output line indicating number
> of blocks and Mb used by only the current versions of client files
> (not overhead, not directories, not old, not deleted, not old and
> deleted). Note that some files are obviously counted twice in the
> current info output (PeteJ 2007-02-25):
>                 Blocks used: 12178542 (47572.43Mb)
>    Blocks used by old files: 9052490 (35361.29Mb)
> Blocks used by deleted files: 10209326 (39880.18Mb)
> Add a similar client-side "bbackupquery -q usage quit" output line.

Unfortunately this is not so easy to resolve, because bbstored does not 
currently keep track of that statistic in the store info file, so to find 
it out would require scanning the entire store, making this command run 
very slowly :(

I'm working on a change which will add extra info to the store file, e.g. 
numbers of files in various states, and I will add this value to the ones 
that bbstored will keep track of in the store info file. However, this 
requires a change to the store info format, which breaks backwards 
compatibility of the store.

I will make it automatically upgrade store info files in the old format, 
so that it will just work transparently on upgrade, but this will make it 
harder to downgrade to an older version of bbstored on the server. I think 
that the store info file can be completely regenerated by "bbstoreaccounts 
check fix", so that it will be possible to revert, but only after running
"bbstoraccounts check fix" on all accounts.

I've therefore been holding back this change until after the release of 
0.11. However, if there's a consensus that this feature is useful enough 
to warrant this breaking of store compatibility, I will definitely 
consider merging it as soon as it's done. So please let me know if you'd 
like or not like to see this feature in 0.11.

The new format will make it much easier to add new store parameters in 
future without breaking backwards compatibility, and also includes the 
ability to set a text string as the "name" of an account, which many 
people have requested (as a workaround for the fact that hexadecimal 
account numbers are not very user-friendly), and also a "bbstoreaccounts 
list" command to list all accounts with their names.

Cheers, Chris.
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