Okay, thanks guys. It seems that -H sould be included by default, unless there is a specific reason not to. Maybe the rsync -a option switch should include hard links by default. Rsync tutorial type information usually lists generic examples such as: sudo rsync -avz <source> <destination> and not addressing the subject of hard links. And you weren't kidding about the number of entries in /var/lib/yum/yumdb. Wow! On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 12:01 PM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote: > 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 > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >