Retain

Keeps selected versions of files in your backup history to implement a backup file retention policy and removes files that are not needed according to your policy. Retain will never remove the most recent backup of an active (not deleted) file. If you want to keep all files in your backup there is no need to run retain.

The -s, -t, -m and -x options are most commonly used. The other options, including pathnames, are special purpose:

-v0 don’t show pathnames from command line

-v1 shows files deleted

-v2 also shows files kept, with the reason each file was removed or kept

-rN apply retention policy only to backup versions N and below

-n displays information about what would be retained and deleted, without doing anything

There are two options to specify a retention policy:

-s retain by schedule

-t retain by time

The -s and -t options can be used together: first -t is used to keep all files saved recently within the -t time interval, then -s is used after that. So -t has the effect of delaying the start of -s. If neither is used, the default is to retain all files, though options -m and -x may also cause files to be removed.

The -m and -x options further limit the files retained:

-m limit the maximum number of copies of each file

-x limit the retention time of deleted files

Be careful with -m and -x because they override your -s and -t retention policy; read on for more details.

Retain, Versions, "Holes", and Recovering Backup Space

Some backup programs do retention by versions, deleting entire versions of old backups. HashBackup does retention by files: when there are too many versions of a file, it deletes individual versions of that file.

As an example, if you backup file A in version 0 and it stays on your filesystem but never changes, it is never backed up again. The only version containing file A is version 0.

When retain and rm delete files, they create "holes" or empty space in arc files. When this empty space becomes too big, HB compacts the arc file by creating a new arc file without the empty space. This packing process is controlled by several config options beginning with pack-. See the Config page for details.

Retention by time: -t

The -t time option is used when your goal is to preserve all backup history within a certain time. The time argument specifies how far back to keep versions from the finish of the most recent backup. For example, 2y means the last 2 years and 4m means the last 4 months. Time may be any one of:

Ny = the last N years
Nq = the last N quarters (120 days)
Nm = the last N months (30 days)
Nw = the last N weeks
Nd = the last N days
Nh = the last N hours
Nn = the last N minutes (note the use of n not m for minutes)
Ns = the last N seconds (used for testing)

The advantage of the -t option is that it allows you to restore files from any time within your retention period and is easy to understand. The disadvantage is that more versions (copies) of the same file may be kept, especially with frequently modified files and frequent backups, so more backup disk space is used.

Retention by schedule: -s

Retaining files by schedule is a more sophisticated option. It is used to save several recent versions of files, and some, but not all, older versions. For example, when doing daily backups you may want to save the last 7 backups to be able to restore any files changed within the past week. You also may want to keep one backup per month for the last 3 months in case there is a problem you didn’t notice within 7 days. You could use -t 3m to keep all backups made within the last 3 months, but that would keep 90 daily backups. Using -s 7d3m will save the last 7 daily backups, plus 1 backup per month for the last 3 months - 10 backups altogether.

The -s retension option works by examining each file’s history and deciding which versions of that file to keep and which to remove based on your retention schedule. It does not save or remove entire backup versions.

At Most vs At Least: retain-extra-versions

The retention schedule -s1m can be interpreted different ways, either:

Stacked vs Overlapping Retention Periods

The retention schedule -s7d4w3m can be interpreted different ways:

Examples

-s7d - retain 1 backup from each of the last 7 days. If you had performed backups every hour for a week, some versions of files would be removed leaving you with 1 version per day for the last 7 days. An easier way to accomplish this would be to only do backups once per day, but perhaps you need hourly backups while a project is in certain very active stages, then a daily backup is okay when things calm down and files are changing less often.

-s7d4w - similar to above, but also retains 1 weekly backup for each of the last 4 weeks. This provides more history in case a version of a file is needed that is more than 7 days old. With this policy, there would be 11 versions retained.

-s28d - in contrast to 7d4w, which retains 11 versions, a 28d retention policy would retain 1 backup for each of the last 28 days.

-s7d4w12m - retain 1 backup from each of the last 7 days, 1 from each of the last 4 weeks, and 1 from each of the last 12 months, for a total of 23 prior backups for the year.

-s365d - retain 1 backup from each of the last 365 days, for a total of 365 prior backups. This policy could be used for data such as security log files, where a specific day might be needed and a more coarse retention policy such as 7d4w12m would not allow the restore of a specific day from a few months ago.

-s7d4w3m4q5y - retain 1 backup from each of the last 7 days, 1 from each of the last 4 weeks, 1 from each of the last 3 months, 1 from each of the last 4 quarters (12 weeks), and 1 from each of the last 5 years. This is a very safe retention policy that uses less disk space than -t 5y. This can be selected with -s safe.

For -s, the retension options must be listed in order, from shortest time period to longest, so 5y7d will not work: it must be 7d5y.

The retention schedule options are:

Nn = N minutes
Nh = N hours
Nd = N days
Nw = N weeks
Nm = N months
Nq = N quarters
Ny = N years
safe = 7d4w3m4q5y

Note that minutes are specified with n and months are specified with m.

It is easy to confuse the meaning of retention policies. For example, a policy of -s3m means to retain 1 backup from each of the last 3 months. It does not mean to retain all backups made in the last 3 months; that would be specified with -t3m. Even if you made backups every hour, a policy of -s3m would leave you with at most 3 prior backups of each file, one for each of the last 3 months. By contrast, a policy of -s90d would retain 1 backup from each of the last 90 days, leaving you with a daily history for the prior 3 months. A policy of -s1825d (365 times 5) would retain a daily backup version from the last 5 years, whereas -s5y would retain only 5 prior versions, 1 from each of the last 5 years.

Retention of deleted files: -x

The -x option is used to specify a different retention time for files that have been deleted. For example, if you have been backing up files for the last 2 years and still have them on your computer, you may want to keep the entire 2 year history, so you would use -t2y. Or you don’t need to run retain at all to keep all files. But if you deleted some files a year ago, you may not want to keep their backup history for 2 years; maybe keeping deleted files in your backup history for 3 months is enough, just in case you delete a file by mistake. Use -t2y -x3m to remove deleted files after 3 months.

If -x is not specified, it defaults to the sum of intervals for -t and -s. For -t1w -s7d4w, the default for -x would be 6 weeks.

If your backup seems to be "too big", check to make sure you used -x with your retain command, because deleted files can accumulate quickly. For example, the HashBackup development server had a retention of -s30d12m (keep last 30 days plus 1 backup per month for a year). Adding -x3m to remove files deleted more than 3 months ago trimmed 1/3rd of the backup space - 36GB. Keeping every deleted file for 12 months can use a lot of backup space!

Retention by number of copies: -m

The -m option is simple to understand: the most recent N copies of each file are retained, and any older copies are deleted. This option can be used with either -s or -t.

You can use -x and/or -m without using -s or -t.

Retention With Pathnames

Pathnames can be used with retain so that it operates on just these files or directories. This is useful when you want to retain fewer copies of certain parts of the backup. For example, if you backup /home with several users, each user could have a different retention policy by running retain with /home/user1, then /home/user2, etc. As another example, you may have a log directory where you only want to keep the last 30 days even though for the rest of the backup you want to keep 1 year of backups.

It’s a good idea to continue running retain on the entire backup, without a pathname, unless you are sure that the path-specific retains will cover all parts of the backup.

NOTES:

Example Retain Session

Here is a typical example of a HashBackup file retention session. The command is:

$ hb retain -c /hb -s 7d4w12m -x7d

This will keep one backup for each of the last 7 days, one for each of the last 4 weeks, and one for each of the last 12 months. Files deleted in the last 7 days will be kept; files deleted more than 7 days ago from the live system will be removed from the backup.

Notice that not all archives are compressed. HashBackup compresses archives that have had around 50% of their data removed (configurable with the pack-percent-free config keyword). This is to balance performance, disk space usage, and bandwidth. For example, if one small file is removed from a 1GB archive file, it doesn’t make sense to spend time compressing it or using bandwidth to transmit it to the remote server for such a small space reduction.