From c6ca89e0cadd3e6c5029083582d8887c5da66bc8 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Lars Wirzenius Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2014 19:22:50 +0100 Subject: Add a paragraph on how checkpoint generations work --- manual/en/060-backing-up.mdwn | 8 ++++++++ 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+) (limited to 'manual/en') diff --git a/manual/en/060-backing-up.mdwn b/manual/en/060-backing-up.mdwn index 1bd57133..e04f5a89 100644 --- a/manual/en/060-backing-up.mdwn +++ b/manual/en/060-backing-up.mdwn @@ -181,6 +181,14 @@ checkpoint. This is all fully automatic, you don't need to do anything for it to happen. See the `--checkpoint` setting for choosing how often the checkpoints should happen. +Note that if Obnam doesn't get to finish, and you have to re-start it, +it starts over from the beginning. The checkpoint generation does not +contain enough state for Obnam to start backing up from the latest +file in the checkpoint: it'd be very complicated state, and easily +invalidated by filesystem changes. Instead, Obnam scans all files, but +since the checkpoint was made, most files will hopefully not have +changed since, so the scanning should be relatively fast. + The only problem with the patient option is that your most precious data doesn't get backed up while all your large, but less precious data is being backed up. For example, you may have a large amount of -- cgit v1.2.1