zvault/docs/man/zvault-prune.1.md

zvault-prune(1) -- Remove backups based on age

SYNOPSIS

zvault prune [OPTIONS] <REPO>

DESCRIPTION

This subcommand removes backups in the repository REPO based on their age.

If a prefix is specified via --prefix, only backups which start with this string are considered for removal.

The prune logic will preserve a certain number of backups for different time periods and discard the rest. The available periods are daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. For each of those periods, a number N can be specified that defines that for each of the last N of these periods, a single backup (the newest one in that period) will be kept.

For example, --daily 3 will keep backups of the last 3 days, i.e. one backup for today, yesterday and the day before yesterday (if a backup has been saved today). If several backups have been saved on a single day, only the newest is kept.

The different periods can also be combined to preserve backups using multiple different time periods. Backups are only removed if they are not preserved by any of the time periods.

For example, --daily 3 --weekly 4 --monthly 3 will keep one backup for each of the last 3 days, for each of the last 4 weeks and for each of the last 3 months. As time progresses, the daily backups will be removed as new ones are created so that only 3 of them are kept but each week one of them will be preserved as a weekly backup and an old weekly backup will be removed unless that backup happens to be the last backup of last month...

If one period is not set, no backups for that time period will be preserved. This command will refuse to remove all backups if called without options.

Unless the option --force is set, this command only displays the backups that would be removed but does not remove them.

This command renders certain chunks unused, but reclaiming their space is a complicated task as chunks are combined into bundles together with other chunks which are potentially still used. Please use zvault-vacuum(1) to reclaim unused space.

Important note: Although this command does not actually remove any data, the data of the deleted backups becomes inaccessible and can not be restored.

OPTIONS

• -p, --prefix <PREFIX>:

  Only consider backups starting with this prefix.

• -d, --daily <NUM>:

  Keep the newest backup for each of the last NUM days.

• -w, --weekly <NUM>:

  Keep the newest backup for each of the last NUM weeks.

• -m, --monthly <NUM>:

  Keep the newest backup for each of the last NUM months.

• -y, --yearly <NUM>:

  Keep the newest backup for each of the last NUM years.

• -f, --force:

  Actually remove backups instead of displaying what would be removed.

• -q, --quiet:

  Print less information

• -v, --verbose:

  Print more information

• -h, --help:

  Prints help information

• -V, --version:

  Prints version information

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2017-2018 Dennis Schwerdel This software is licensed under GPL-3 or newer (see LICENSE.md)