rsync mystery

[Mike Bird]

On Mon May 19 2008 16:52:06 Karl Larsen wrote:
> Mike Bird wrote:
> >>     Does anyone know why a backup is larger than the original??
> >
> > Did the backup use both -H and -S?
> >
> > IIRC your root partition was about 2.8GB.  Did it backup
> > other partitions (e.g. /home or /var/run) in addition to
> > your root partition?
> >
> > --Mike Bird
>
>     I used neither -H or -S it was a simple backup of the entire system.
> I used this:
> sudo rsync -av /boot /bin /dev /etc /initrd /lib /proc /root /sbin /sys
> /tmp /usr : /mnt
>
> and that caused the larger than original backup.

Without -H each multiply-linked file will turn into multiple copies, taking
up more space.

Without -S the holes in sparse files will be filled with zeroes, taking
up more space.

--Mike Bird