Re: Homebuilt NAS Advice

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> Another advantage is that it lets you access a host's files even when
>> that host is down (as long as the backup server is up, which is likely
>> to always be the case).
>
> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something here, but why can't you do that
> with ordinary forward deltas, as long as all the necessary information
> is stored with the backups?

I was talking specifically about a system like `rdiff-backup` where the
latest version of the backed up files are readily available "in their
normal form".  Wit forward deltas you'd either have to settle for
searching through some old backup, or have to deal with the deltas
somehow.  Of course, some software might hide all of that for you to
some extent, but my point was that with `rdiff-backup`, I can trivially
log onto the backup server, go to a given hosts's backup area and
I immediately see that hosts's files (in an almost-uptodate form).


        Stefan