Empty backup directory

[Steve Litt]

Daniel said on Tue, 29 Jun 2021 14:26:20 +0200

>On 28/6/21 16:40, Steve Litt wrote:
>> Daniel said on Mon, 28 Jun 2021 14:58:10 +0200
>> 

>
>I am actually also in the habit of saving files regularly via shortcut 
>mainly because I don't fully understand/trust LyX's auto saving 
>function. However, one case where this often fail is when I start a
>new document of which I am don't expect it to end up being useful
>after all. 

:-) We've all been there. :-)

If I had a dime for every time a file called junk.py suddenly became
important, I'd be a rich man.


> So, I don't want to clutter my storage by saving the
>document. 

The cool thing about my bupsky script is it automatically backs up the
whole tree of the current directory, even things called junk.jnk. I
have 14TB disk space so I never thought about the cost of backing up
temporary files, but this thread has made me realize that a simple
script to delete all trees not containing a file less than X days old
would lessen the temptation to not back up junk files.

I'll show you something:

[slitt at mydesk ~]$ du -hs /scratch/bup
48G	/scratch/bup
[slitt at mydesk ~]$ 

Consuming 48G with ancient backups that are already backed up by my
main backup system is inexcuseable. Soon I'll need to write a program
to tree delete all trees with no files under X days old. The big
challenge will be to include barriers to prevent deletion of young
files if my clock goes bad, and also to prevent deletion of random
directories (like /home/slitt for instance) if something bogus happens.

Thanks for the idea.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Spring 2021 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques of the Successful
Technologist http://www.troubleshooters.com/techniques