moving snapshots to another drive

at your suggestion, i initially tried

sudo cp -a --preserve=all /path-to-old/backintime /path-to-new/backintime

this worked, but had the problem of making root the owner of everything, and i had previously run BIT as a user, so things failed.

i could have just chown'd everything, but chose to delete the BIT directory on the new drive and just did

cp -a --preserve=all /path-to-old/backintime /path-to-new/backintime

and everything worked just fine.

thanks for your prompt help. keep up the good work--BIT has been *really* helpful in recovering some of my old files, and I like how efficient it is.

Thanks Bart de Koning, that solved my question.

Hi...I'm using BIT to back up my entire /home partition to my external usb drive. I'm running BIT as USER. I'm noticing that my permissions are being changed to ROOT ownership on my external. How can I preserve my permissions with myself as owner of everything? thanks

Hey, normally BIT creates backups that are owned by the user that makes them, so it is not BiT that changes the ownership (a programme that runs as a user should not be able do that actually). So I wonder, is your USB drive FAT32 formatted? FAT32 does not support ownerships. To support FAT32 BiT preserves the ownerships and modifiers in a separate file. When BiT restores your data it will restore also the ownerships (however when it runs as a user it can only use your own userid). Just to warn you: FAT32 also does not support hardlinks, so BiT will use quite some harddisk space: do not schedule too often.

thanks Bart...when I get back I will check my external to see...I thought it was ntfs...? Another question: to restore can I just do a direct copy from any file manager back to /home? thanks

OK...my external is NTFS...how could this be? I'll try again in the meantime....advice appreciated.

OK...one more time...used BIT as USER, backed up to my NTFS external drive, and the permissions went to ROOT on everything copied to the external. I'm using EXT4 on my /home. Any advice?

I am not entirely sure, but I do not think that NTFS supports users, not the
way linux handles it. The driver actually handles it, and I think it does
this by default. But does it impose a problem. Can you do anything with the
files? And what happens if you try to restore a test file?
By the way NTFS should be able to support hardlinks, however I am not sure
whether the linux driver supports it... So I am not entirely sure if your
snapshots use too much space.

Cheers,
Bart

2009/9/15 joutlan <email address hidden>

> Question #82029 on Back In Time changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/backintime/+question/82029
>
> joutlan posted a new comment:
> OK...one more time...used BIT as USER, backed up to my NTFS external
> drive, and the permissions went to ROOT on everything copied to the
> external. I'm using EXT4 on my /home. Any advice?
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are an answer
> contact for Back In Time.
>

Hi Bart....I did a direct copy of a folder back to my EXT4 /home partition and the permissions went back to how they were, i.e. me as owner, etc. I have to tell you, I can't handle those hardlinks...took way too much space on my external....I've gone back to Grsync and keep one current sync'd copy all the time...much easier for me. Any changes planned for BIT?

Ah, hardlinking on NTFS drives is not working apparently, I was already
afraid of that. You could set BiT to make a snapshot only weekly and use the
keep free space option to make sure that BiT is only keeping 2 or 3
snapshots. Or make a ext partition on your external drive...
As for changes planned for BiT, I do mainly bug fixes, however Dan might be
planning something big... There will be some extra features like having more
profiles, and we will fix the Schedule per Included Folder thing that is
broken at the moment.

Cheers

2009/9/16 joutlan <email address hidden>

> Question #82029 on Back In Time changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/backintime/+question/82029
>
> joutlan posted a new comment:
> Hi Bart....I did a direct copy of a folder back to my EXT4 /home
> partition and the permissions went back to how they were, i.e. me as
> owner, etc. I have to tell you, I can't handle those hardlinks...took
> way too much space on my external....I've gone back to Grsync and keep
> one current sync'd copy all the time...much easier for me. Any changes
> planned for BIT?
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are an answer
> contact for Back In Time.
>

thanks Bart....I'm thinking of splitting the 500 gig drive into a 250/250 ext4 and ntfs.

Lately I runned some tests on a NTFS drive. it actually supports
hardlinking, so the hard links cannot be the problem.If you use the Schedule
per Included Folder then that is the problem, that function has a problem
with the hardlinks...

2009/9/17 Bart <email address hidden>

> Ah, hardlinking on NTFS drives is not working apparently, I was already
> afraid of that. You could set BiT to make a snapshot only weekly and use the
> keep free space option to make sure that BiT is only keeping 2 or 3
> snapshots. Or make a ext partition on your external drive...
> As for changes planned for BiT, I do mainly bug fixes, however Dan might be
> planning something big... There will be some extra features like having more
> profiles, and we will fix the Schedule per Included Folder thing that is
> broken at the moment.
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
> 2009/9/16 joutlan <email address hidden>
>
> Question #82029 on Back In Time changed:
>> https://answers.launchpad.net/backintime/+question/82029
>>
>> joutlan posted a new comment:
>> Hi Bart....I did a direct copy of a folder back to my EXT4 /home
>> partition and the permissions went back to how they were, i.e. me as
>> owner, etc. I have to tell you, I can't handle those hardlinks...took
>> way too much space on my external....I've gone back to Grsync and keep
>> one current sync'd copy all the time...much easier for me. Any changes
>> planned for BIT?
>>
>> --
>> You received this question notification because you are an answer
>> contact for Back In Time.
>>
>
>

I tried cp -a --preserve=all /path-to-old/backintime /path-to-new/backintime but it does not work for me. Everything has root permissions instead of the original ones. I am using EXT3 on my external drives. I am going to try using gparted to copy the partition.