Special files generated and used by storeBackup

Never change the files described below! They are absolutely important for storeBackup to work properly!

Inside a backup, the following entries are always created. Do not delete them. Also, make sure you do not have them in the top level directory of your source tree:

.md5CheckSums.info

This file contains meta information about the backup. Example (I cut some lines for better readability):

version=1.3
date=2008.09.06 10.23.33
sourceDir='/home/hjc'
followLinks=0
compress='bzip2'
uncompress='bzip2' '-d'
postfix='.bz2'
exceptSuffix='\.bz2' '\.gif' '\.gpg' '\.gz' '\.jpg' '\.mp3' '\.mpeg' '\.mpg' '\.ogg'
exceptDirs='/home/hjc/Mail' '/home/hjc/Maildir' '/home/hjc/nosave' '/home/hjc/tmp'
includeDirs=
exceptRule='$size > &::SIZE("100M")'
includeRule=
exceptTypes=
preservePerms=yes
lateLinks=yes
lateCompress=yes
cpIsGnu=yes

.md5CheckSums[.bz2]

This file contains all information about the files, directories etc. in the backup. A few lines selected as an example:

# contents/md5 compr dev-inode inodeBackup ctime mtime atime size uid
gid mode filename
dir 0 2097-386 0 1169342164 1094800914 1200948038 0 1049 100 493 c++
063e5feb114a82059e7f44c5fb0e548c c 2097-1834 1372638 1169343033 1078512595 1125554314 489786 1049 1001 384 mbox
symlink 0 2097-31105 0 1169350675 1169350675 1169350675 0 1049 0 0 .Xresources

The permissions (mode) are stored as decimal values (not octal).

.storeBackupLinks

A directory which is empty if all links are set.

These files may be in the root of your backup directory:

.md5CheckSums.notFinished

Up to version 3.4.3: The existence of this file indicates that this backup was not properly finished (e.g. if it was stopped by pressing [ctrl]+[c]).

.storeBackupLinks/backup.Finished

Backups created with version 3.5 or higher: The existence of this file indicates, that this backup was properly finished. If it is missing, the backup was not finished properly (means it was e.g., stopped by pression control-c).

.storeBackup.log[.bz2]

The log file of storeBackup.pl. This is the default name which you can change using the options of storeBackup.pl (options logInBackupDir and compressLogInBackupDir).

.storeBackup.notSaved.bz2

If you exclude files with rules, you can generate a list of files (via the option writeExcludeLog of storeBackup.pl) which are not stored in the backup.

The following files only exist if you use option lateLinks. After a successful run of storeBackupUpdateBackup.pl, these files are deleted:

.storeBackupLinks/linkFile.bz2

Contains (parts) of the information what has to be done by storeBackupUpdateBackup.pl (beside file .md5CheckSums[.bz2]).

.storeBackupLinks/linkTo

Contains relative paths to the backups where linkFile.bz2 refers to, eg:

../2008.09.05_16.07.23
../../lotte/2008.09.06_02.00.04

Here you see a relative path to a previous backup and a link to a backup in another backup series.

.storeBackupLinks/linkFrom<number>

Each file contains relative paths from backups to the actual one. Example:

../2008.09.06_10.23.33