On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 11:51 AM, Gordon Messmer <gordon.messmer at 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? -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com