{"id":449,"date":"2009-05-21T19:44:44","date_gmt":"2009-05-21T09:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.wordpress.com\/?p=449"},"modified":"2018-12-12T16:12:06","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T06:12:06","slug":"does-networker-scan-the-indices-for-changed-files-when-it-does-a-backup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/05\/21\/does-networker-scan-the-indices-for-changed-files-when-it-does-a-backup\/","title":{"rendered":"Does NetWorker scan the indices for changed files when it does a backup?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is a fairly common question to see asked \u2013 does NetWorker, when a non-full backup is run, scan the existing client indices to determine what files have changed from previous backups?<\/p>\n<p>The short answer is: no.<\/p>\n<p>The more in-depth answer is that NetWorker will use one of a few different mechanisms for determining what files should be backed up in a non-full backup scenario, and none of those mechanisms involve scanning the client indices. These mechanisms are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Check for files that have changed since a certain date. Whenever a non-full backup is run, the NetWorker server includes in the backup command the last savetime. Thus, all changed files can be quickly calculated from this.<\/li>\n<li>Check for changes according to the change journal (Windows only).<\/li>\n<li>Check for changes based on the archive bit (Windows only).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Personally, I really <strong>dislike<\/strong> the use of the archive bit. Too many programmers on Windows take liberty with this odious little setting, and it&#8217;s become so bastardised and unreliable that my <strong><em>very firm<\/em><\/strong> recommendation is you follow the instructions in the NetWorker administration guide to turn off use of the archive bit in incremental backups. (Hint: search for NSR_AVOID_ARCHIVE*).<\/p>\n<p>So, there&#8217;s 3 ways that NetWorker can be expected to use to determine what files should be backed up in a non-full backup \u2013 and <strong>none<\/strong> of those mechanisms are achieved through an index scan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<br \/>\n* <strong>[Updated 2009-06-18]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Expanding on this more fully &#8211; on the backup server itself, establish an environment variable called NSR_AVOID_ARCHIVE and set it to any value other than &#8220;No&#8221;. I prefer to set it to &#8220;YES&#8221; or 1 so it&#8217;s entirely clear what the desired result is.<\/p>\n<p>On Unix, places to set this is in the \/etc\/profile or the NetWorker startup script; however, the problem with setting it in the NetWorker startup script is that you have to remember to re-create that setting every time you upgrade NetWorker, since the startup script is fully replaced each time.<\/p>\n<p>In Windows, set it as a system environment variable under the properties for the system itself. These variables are established before programs are started, meaning that NetWorker will be aware of them when it starts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a fairly common question to see asked \u2013 does NetWorker, when a non-full backup is run, scan the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,16,27],"tags":[462,464,468],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basics","category-networker","category-windows","tag-incremental","tag-index","tag-index-scan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pKpIN-7f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7655,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions\/7655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}