Skipping hardlinks when using TSM Backup
- by Lars Haugseth
We need to backup a filesystem with lots of hardlinks. Since there are
several hardlinks for each "true" file, we would like to skip all the
hardlinks when backing up the filesystem to avoid n exact copies of
each file.
The backup is done using Tivoli Storage Manager Backup, and we've been
unable to get it to treat hardlinks as anything other than separate
files to be backed up alongside each other.
In case it's relevant for possible solutions, I'd like to note that
it's possible to tell a hardlink from a proper file by the filename:
foobarbaz-123.ext # file
foobarbaz-123-1.ext # hardlink
foobarbaz-123-2.ext # hardlink
barbazfoo-456.ext # file
barbazfoo-456-1.ext # hardlink
barbazfoo-456-2.ext # hardlink
barbazfoo-456-3.ext # hardlink
That is, all hardlinks have two hyphens in the filename, where as
proper files have just the one.
The server is running Ubuntu Linux, and the files are situated on
a gfs volume on our SAN.
