On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 11:51 AM, Gordon Messmer gordon.messmer@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/11/2015 09:02 AM, Francis Gerund wrote:
When using rsync to backup and restore, when should and when should one *not* include hard links (by using the -H option switch)?
It's probably too site or application specific to give any general advice.
Run this command across the filesystem you're going to back up: find /path -type f -links +1
All of the files listed in find's output have multiple links, and will benefit from using -H.
The cost associated with -H is that rsync has to keep a table in memory of all of the inodes and paths that it processes. A large filesystem can cause rsync to consume a lot of RAM. If sufficient RAM is available, I would always recommend -H.
I don't know about the actual implementation, but wouldn't it really only need to track the inodes/paths of the files with >1 link?