dar_manager(1) dar_manager(1)
NAME
dar_manager - compiles several archives contents in a database to ease
file restoration
SYNOPSIS
dar_manager [-v] -C [<path>/]<database> [-z <algo>]
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -A [<path>/]<basename> [-9
<min-digits>] [[<path>/]<archive_basename>]
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -l
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -D <number>[-<number>]
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -b <number> <new_archive_base-
name>
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -p <number> <path>
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -o [list of options to pass to
dar]
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -d [<path to dar command>]
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> [-N] [-k] [-w <date>] [-e
"<extra options to dar>"] -r [list of files to restore]
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -u <number>
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -f file
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -s
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -m <number> <number>
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -c
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -i
dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -@ { <filename> | "-" }
dar_manager -h
dar_manager -V
DESCRIPTION
dar_manager is part of the Disk Archive suite. Its purpose is to sim-
plify the restoration of a set of few files present in many backup,
full or differential. This is achieved by gathering the catalogue of
each archive (this has to be done once). At any time you just have to
give the relative path to the files you want to restore, dar_manager
will call dar with the proper options and restore the last version of
each file (or the last version before given date). Note that dar_man-
ager is especially interesting when you have removed some files by
accident some time ago and wish to recover them from a set of full and
differential backups. It is thus not really adapted/efficient to
restore the state a directory tree had at a given time, in particular
when some files have to be removed. For that you would better use dar
directly with the corresponding archive(s) up to the date for which you
wish to restore the state of a whole directory tree.
You can restore any file by hand without dar_manager , but if you have
a lot of differential backups, you may spend a long time to find the
archive that contains the last version of your files, as dar will not
save it if it has not changed since previous backup. dar_manager sim-
plify the process by looking in its internal database, built from ar-
chive "catalogues" (= table of contents).
OPTIONS
-C, --create [<path>/]<database>
creates an empty database that will collect infor-
mation about several archives. The <database> is a
filename that is required for -B option. To destroy
a <database> just remove the file.
-B, --base [<path>/]<database>
specify the database to read or modify. The <data-
base> file must exist, and have a database struc-
ture (see -C option).
-i, --interactive use a keyboard interactive text menu to do opera-
tions on the given database. So you may avoid read-
ing the other options described in this manual
page, if you wish, and just use the interactive
option. You will however always have to create an
empty database (-C option) and restore files manu-
ally (-r option).
-A, --add [<path>/]<basename> [ [<path>/]<archive_basename>]
add an archive to the database. An isolated cata-
logue can also be used only if it has been produced
by dar version 1.2.0 or above. Why ? Because, an
isolated catalogue produced by older version will
always tell that no files are saved in the archive
of reference, in that case the solution is to pro-
vide the archive itself as argument. An optional
second argument is the basename of the archive if
it is different from the first argument (need for
extraction of files). For example you could have an
isolated catalogue in first argument and the base-
name of the original archive (where is stored the
data) as second argument. By default,
-9, --min-digits <num>
the slice number zeroed padding to use to get the
slices filename (for more details see dar man page
at this same option) dar_manager will look for an
archive of reference in the command line used to
create each archive, but in some cases, it may be
necessary to specify the archive name (for example
if you've changed its name).
-l, --list displays the information about the archives com-
piled in the database. In particular, a number is
given to each archive, which is required to some
other option to design a particular archive within
the database. Nothing avoids you to feed the data-
base with several archive of the same basename !
You will just have to guess which one is asked
under this name. :-)
-D, --delete <number>[-<number>]
removes an archive (or a range of archive) from the
database. The number of the archive (or the min and
max number or the archive range) is correspond to
those given by the -l option. Note that all archive
number greater than the one(s) to be delete will be
decremented to keep continuous numbering of the ar-
chive inside the database. If a single number is
given (not a range), it may be also a negative num-
ber, by which it means counting from the end. For
example, -1 means the last archive of the base, -2
the penultimate, etc.
-b, --base <number> <new_archive_basename>
this option allows you to rename the archive base-
name (used when restoring files from it). Here too,
the number may be also a negative number.
-p, --path <number> <path>
this option allows you to change the location of a
given archive (used when restoring files from it).
Here too, a negative number is allowed.
-o, --options [list of option to pass to dar]
Specify the option to use when calling dar. Each
call erases the previous setting. Possible dar
options are all the available ones except "-x" and
simple arguments (the [list of path]) which will be
added by dar_manager itself.
-d, --dar [<path>] Set the path to dar. If no argument is given, dar
is expected to be located in the PATH
-r, --restore [list of files or directories to restore]
dar_manager will restore all (an only) the given
files or directories, in their latest recorded sta-
tus, or before the date give thanks to the -e
option. If a directory is given all subfiles and
subdirectories are restored recursively in it. You
can filter out some files from this recursion
thanks to dar usual filtering option (see dar man
page) you can provide beside -r using the -e option
(see below). Dar_manager lead dar to remove any
file, if a file is stored as having been removed at
date requested for restoration, it is simply not
restored. Thus if you restore in an empty directory
you will get all the files and directories you pro-
vided to dar_manager in the state they have at the
date you asked. File that did not existed at that
time will not be restored. However you can restore
over an existing installation, dar will then warn
you before overwriting files (see -w and -n options
for dar) but will still not remove files that were
recorded removed from a previous archive of refer-
ence. Note that files listed after -r option, must
never have an absolute path. They will be restored
under the directory specified with -R option of dar
(passed to dar using -o or -e options), or by
default, under the current directory.
-w, --when <date> alters the -r option behavior: still restores the
files in the most recent version available but only
before the given date (versions of more recent
dates are ignored). The <date> must respect the
following format [ [
[year/]month/]day-]hour:minute[:second]. For exam-
ple "22:10" for 10 PM past 10 or the current day,
"7-22:10" for 10 PM past 10 the 7th of the current
month, "3/07-22:10" for the 7th of march at 22:10
of the current year, "2002/03/31-14:00:00" the date
of the first dar's release ;-). The given date must
be in the past, of course, and is compared to the
"last modification" date of the saved files and not
to the date at which archives have been done. Thus
if a file has been changed long ago but saved in a
recent (full) archive, it will be elected for
restoration even for dates older than the creation
of the archive. In the other way, a file saved long
time ago with a mtime that was set to a date in the
future will not be elected for restoration when
giving the date at which was done the archive.
Note that the provided date is relative to the system timezone
which is overriden if the TZ environement variable is set (see
tzselect(1) for more details)
-e, --extra <options>
pass some more options to dar. While the -o options
takes all that follows on the command line as argu-
ment to pass to dar and write these in the data-
base, the -e option does not alter the database and
has only one argument. In other words, if you need
to pass several options to dar through the use of
the -e option, you need to use quotes (simple
quotes ' or double quotes ") to enclose these
options. Example:
dar_manager -B database.dmd -e "-w -v -p -b -r -H 1" -r
some/files
while using -o option you must not use quotes:
dar_manager -B database.dmd -o -w -v -p -b -r -H 1
-u, --used <number> list the files that the given archive owns as last
version available. Thus when no file is listed, the
given archive is no more useful in database, and
can be removed safely (-D option). If <number> is
zero, all available file are listed, the status
provided for each file present in the database is
the most recent status. A negative number is
allowed for this option (see -D option for
details).
-f, --file <file> displays in which archive the given file is saved,
and what are the modification date (mtime) and
change date (ctime).
-s, --stats show the number of most recent files by archive.
This helps to determine which archive can be safely
removed from the database.
-m, --move <number> <number>
changes the order of archives in the database. The
first number is the number of the archive to move,
while the second is the place where it must be
shifted to.
Archive order is important: An old archive must
have a smaller index than a recent archive. If you
add archive to a database in the order they have
been created all should be fine. Else if a file has
a more recent version in an archive which index is
smaller, a warning will be issued (unless -ai
option is used). This can occur if by mistake you
added an archive to the database in the wrong order
(old archive added after a recent one), in that
case simply using the -m option will let you fix
this mistake. If instead the problem is relative to
a single file (or a small set of file), you should
wonder why this file has its modification date
altered in a way that it pretends to be older than
its really is. Checking for the signs of a rootkit
may be a good idea.
-c, --check check the database consistency, in particular the
date ordering is verified and warning are issued
for each file having more recent version located in
an archive with a smaller index inside the data-
base. -ai option makes -c option useless.
-N, --ignore-options-in-base
Do not use the options stored in database when
calling dar for restoration. This option is only
useful while restoring files from dar_manager,
either directly (-r option) or using a batch file
(-@ option, see below).
-k, --ignore-when-removed
By default, dar_manager does not ask dar to restore
file that have been removed at the requested date
(or in the latest state available). This is useful
for example to restore a directory in the state it
has at a given date (only files that existed at
that time are restored). However when you want to
restore a file that has been destroyed by accident,
you need to use -k option so you don't have to
determine at which date that file existed to be be
able to ask dar_manager to restore that file in the
state it had before that date. In other words, -k
option gives a behavior of dar_manager backward
compatible with dar_manager released beside version
2.3.x of dar.
-ai, --alter=ignore-order
avoid dar_manager to issue a warning for each file
not following a chronological order of modification
date when the archive number in the database is
growing.
-@, --batch <filename>
allows you to do several operations on a given
database. All operations are defined in the pro-
vided <filename> and refer to the same database as
defined by the -B switch on command line. This
batch file, must thus not contain neither -B, -C,
-i or -ai option (-ai are global to the batch oper-
ation). The batch file expected layout is one com-
mand per line, thus several arguments (like -l -v
for example) may take place on a given line of the
file (-v can be found both on command line for ver-
bose output about the batch operation steps, as
well as inside the batch file for verbose output of
a particular batched command). Arguments are sepa-
rated by spaces or tabs, other characters are
passed as-is. In consequence, you should only need
to use quotes (using " or ') if you intend to use
an argument containing space. Last, comments may be
placed on any line beginning by a hash character
(#).
-z, --compression <algo>
Only available while creating a database (-C
option), this option let you set the compression
algorithm used to store the database in file. By
default gzip is use, but you can use "none" for no
compression, "bzip2", "xz" and "lzo" for other com-
pression algorithm. Compression level selection may
be added in the future (level 9 is used inter-
nally).
-Q Do not display any message on stderr when not
launched from a terminal (for example when launched
from an at job or crontab). Remains that any ques-
tion to the user will be assumed a 'no' answer,
which most of the time will abort the program.
-v, --verbose displays additional information about what it is
doing.
-h, --help display help usage
-V, --version display software version
EXIT CODES
dar_manager exits with the following code:
0 Operation successful.
1 see dar manual page for signification
2 see dar manual page for signification
3 see dar manual page for signification
5 see dar manual page for signification
7 see dar manual page for signification
8 see dar manual page for signification
11 and above
dar
called from dar_manager has exited with non zero status.
Subtract 10 to this exit code to get dar's exit code.
SIGNALS
dar_manager acts like dar (see dar man page for list of signals), upon
certain signal reception dar aborts cleanly
SEE ALSO
dar(1), dar_xform(1), dar_slave(1), dar_cp(1), dar_split(1)
LIMITATIONS
at most 65534 archives can be compiled in a given database, which
should be enough for most users. Dar_manager does not support encrypted
archives for now and archive cannot neither be encrypted. See the FAQ
for a workaround.
KNOWN BUGS
http://sourceforge.net/p/dar/bugs/
AUTHOR
http://dar.linux.free.fr/
Denis Corbin
France
Europe
3rd Berkeley Distribution August 18th, 2018 dar_manager(1)
dar 2.6.1 - Generated Sat Jan 26 15:20:19 CST 2019