[KLUG Members] Directory Tree Comparison Utilities?

[Adam Williams]

> > tar is not as sexy as a live CD-R filesystem, but it obviously handles
> > these incremental issues better.
> > Assuming your dir structure has not changed much, it sounds like you
> > need to script (or find) a utility to check each file on the CD-R with
> > it on the drive.
> > Which is why tar is better than a live CD-R filesystem.
> > If you like, you can copy the files to a new dir on the drive, and then
> > use rsync to update it (rsync -rutl SRC DEST) and then reburn it as a
> > tar file.


If you know the date of the last backup, the system clock is correct,
and this was a UNIX filesystem it is possible to backup anything with a
modifaction date greater than a given date (the last backup).

> I think I may wind up just backing up the whole thing all over again.

That is what I do.  Incremental backups are just a pain,  I don't even
bother with them anymore.  If disocering a bad tape or botched backup is
a problem, imagine having to depend on four or five tapes to get a
system back.  Nah,  just get a bigger dump device.

> One thing I neglected to mention is that this is a Windows 95 partition
> I want to back up, and it looks like there's a LOT of case mismatch
> between names. No idea what happened, but it ain't pretty.

VFAT is bizarre with case.  The case presented to you is not necessarily
the case on disk, and different tools (explorer vs. cmd, etc...) may
present you with different cases.  We have one backup tool that archives
VFAT as initial character upper case, the rest lower case, and another
tool that uppercases the entire filename (which I suspect is the correct
behaviour).  Thanks Bill.