Hi,
I’m using restic to do snapshots of a folder that doesn’t change often, but changes very fast (for example, it won’t get changed for a few weeks, but then it will change a lot during 5h then go back to being unchanged for a few weeks).
I would like to do backups of this folder about every 30 minutes, but this would clog up the snapshot list, and most of the snapshots would be useless as most of the time the data isn’t changing.
My question is, is there a way for the snapshot not to be added to the list if no data changed? Or perhaps a way to purge snapshots that don’t differ from their parent?
Or am i just using the wrong tool for the job here, in which case what tool would be better suited?
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restic does not support it today.
If you can not live without it check rustic - it is alternative restic format repo client - it does support it:
--skip-identical-parent
Skip writing of snapshot if nothing changed w.r.t. the parent snapshot
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I don’t mind using an alternative client, so rustic will do the trick, thanks!
Do your reading
I use it but it is officially still in beta.
An alternative potential solution would be to run your own script which counts the number of files with with the Last Modified Date (today - n).
If the number is greater than zero then run a backup. Restic is not doing magic, you can write a script which looks for modified files / new files which have been changed within the last n days. Note this does not notice that files or directories have been deleted. You may wish to store the results in a log file so that you will have the results when someone claims they created a file on a specific date but the backup did not run.