I am using git-annex assistant for a few months now and still don't think I have it all setup correctly. My setup is:
- Laptop Computer with low storage. Content creator, assistant: file source
- Desktop Computer with medium storage capacity. Consumer, assistant: manual Mode
- 2TB USB HD (EXT4) Backup, assistant: full backup
- 2.5" portable 500GB drive NTFS formatted. transfer to backup: assistant: tried transfer and partial backup
- Root Server on the web, not yet in the mix. Planned: Index only / content creator
My primary goal is getting the stuff from the Laptop to the 2TB USB drive, syncing the annex with the desktop so I can get files on the desktop from the backup. What works:
- Checking stuff into the annex on the Laptop
- When the 2TB drive is connected to the Laptop, stuff is automatically moved there too
- Bare Repo on the 2.5" configured as partial backup automatically backups the data
What doesn't work:
- Connecting the 2.5" bare repo to the Desktop to move stuff to the backup drive automatically
- Having a human readable folder Structure on the 2.5" NTFS drive. I'd be ok to have a bare repo plus a special remote on the drive, but I don't know how to configure it
- How do I drop stuff from the bare repo on the 2.5" drive? I think a partial backup should drop content that is in a full backup, but it doesn't
Thanks for reading this long post. If anyone has any tips on how to configure the assistant, thats much appreciated.
An incremental backup is supposed to drop content once it reaches a full backup. But, the assistant can only do that if it's able to verify that the full backup drive (or some other repository it can access) has a file, at the same time it's dropping it from the incremental backup drive. If you don't have both the incremental and full backup drives plugged in at the same time, you could consider making git-annex trust the full backup drive, which would avoid this explicit check.
It sounds like you want a non-bare git repository on the 2.5" drive. The assistant does not currently support setting that up, but you can do it by just using
git cloneas shown in the walkthrough.I'm not clear on what doesn't work when you connect the 2.5" drive to your desktop.