1DAR_MANAGER(1) General Commands Manual DAR_MANAGER(1)
2
6 dar_manager - compiles several archives contents in a database to ease
7 file restoration
8
10 dar_manager [-v] -C [<path>/]<database> [-z <algo>]
11 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -A [<path>/]<basename> [-9
13 <min-digits>] [[<path>/]<archive_basename>]
14 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -l
16 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -D <number>[-<number>]
18 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -b <number> <new_archive_base‐
20 name>
21 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -p <number> <path>
23 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -o [list of options to pass to
25 dar]
26 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -d [<path to dar command>]
28 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> [-N] [-k] [-w <date>] [-e "<ex‐
30 tra options to dar>"] -r [list of files to restore]
31 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -u <number>
33 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -f file
35 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -s
37 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -m <number> <number>
39 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -c
41 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -i
43 dar_manager [-v] -B [<path>/]<database> -@ { <filename> | "-" }
45 dar_manager -h
47 dar_manager -V
49
52 dar_manager is part of the Disk Archive suite. Its purpose is to sim‐
53 plify the restoration of a set of few files present in many backup,
54 full or differential. This is achieved by gathering the catalogue of
55 each archive (this has to be done once). At any time you just have to
56 give the relative path to the files you want to restore, dar_manager
57 will call dar with the proper options and restore the last version of
58 each file (or the last version before given date). Note that dar_man‐
59 ager is especially interesting when you have removed some files by ac‐
60 cident some time ago and wish to recover them from a set of full and
61 differential backups. It is thus not really adapted/efficient to re‐
62 store the state a directory tree had at a given time, in particular
63 when some files have to be removed. For that you would better use dar
64 directly with the corresponding archive(s) up to the date for which you
65 wish to restore the state of a whole directory tree.
66 You can restore any file by hand without dar_manager , but if you have
68 a lot of differential backups, you may spend a long time to find the
69 archive that contains the last version of your files, as dar will not
70 save it if it has not changed since previous backup. dar_manager sim‐
71 plify the process by looking in its internal database, built from ar‐
72 chive "catalogues" (= table of contents).
73
75 -C, --create [<path>/]<database>
76 creates an empty database that will collect infor‐
77 mation about several archives. The <database> is a
78 filename that is required for -B option. To destroy
79 a <database> just remove the file.
80 -B, --base [<path>/]<database>
82 specify the database to read or modify. The <data‐
83 base> file must exist, and have a database struc‐
84 ture (see -C option).
85 -i, --interactive use a keyboard interactive text menu to do opera‐
87 tions on the given database. So you may avoid read‐
88 ing the other options described in this manual
89 page, if you wish, and just use the interactive op‐
90 tion. You will however always have to create an
91 empty database (-C option) and restore files manu‐
92 ally (-r option).
93 -A, --add [<path>/]<basename> [ [<path>/]<archive_basename>]
95 add an archive to the database. An isolated cata‐
96 logue can also be used only if it has been produced
97 by dar version 1.2.0 or above. Why ? Because, an
98 isolated catalogue produced by older version will
99 always tell that no files are saved in the archive
100 of reference, in that case the solution is to pro‐
101 vide the archive itself as argument. An optional
102 second argument is the basename of the archive if
103 it is different from the first argument (need for
104 extraction of files). For example you could have an
105 isolated catalogue in first argument and the base‐
106 name of the original archive (where is stored the
107 data) as second argument. By default,
108 -9, --min-digits <num>
110 the slice number zeroed padding to use to get the
111 slices filename (for more details see dar man page
112 at this same option) dar_manager will look for an
113 archive of reference in the command line used to
114 create each archive, but in some cases, it may be
115 necessary to specify the archive name (for example
116 if you've changed its name).
117 -l, --list displays the information about the archives com‐
119 piled in the database. In particular, a number is
120 given to each archive, which is required to some
121 other option to design a particular archive within
122 the database. Nothing avoids you to feed the data‐
123 base with several archive of the same basename !
124 You will just have to guess which one is asked un‐
125 der this name. :-)
126 -D, --delete <number>[-<number>]
128 removes an archive (or a range of archive) from the
129 database. The number of the archive (or the min and
130 max number or the archive range) is correspond to
131 those given by the -l option. Note that all archive
132 number greater than the one(s) to be delete will be
133 decremented to keep continuous numbering of the ar‐
134 chive inside the database. If a single number is
135 given (not a range), it may be also a negative num‐
136 ber, by which it means counting from the end. For
137 example, -1 means the last archive of the base, -2
138 the penultimate, etc.
139 -b, --basename <number> <new_archive_basename>
141 this option allows you to rename the archive base‐
142 name (used when restoring files from it). Here too,
143 the number may be also a negative number.
144 -p, --path <number> <path>
146 this option allows you to change the location of a
147 given archive (used when restoring files from it).
148 Here too, a negative number is allowed.
149 -o, --options [list of option to pass to dar]
151 Specify the option to use when calling dar. Each
152 call erases the previous setting. Possible dar op‐
153 tions are all the available ones except "-x" and
154 simple arguments (the [list of path]) which will be
155 added by dar_manager itself.
156 -d, --dar [<path>] Set the path to dar. If no argument is given, dar
158 is expected to be located in the PATH
159 -r, --restore [list of files or directories to restore]
161 dar_manager will restore all (an only) the given
162 files or directories, in their latest recorded sta‐
163 tus, or before the date give thanks to the -e op‐
164 tion. If a directory is given all subfiles and sub‐
165 directories are restored recursively in it. You can
166 filter out some files from this recursion thanks to
167 dar usual filtering option (see dar man page) you
168 can provide beside -r using the -e option (see be‐
169 low). Dar_manager lead dar to remove any file, if a
170 file is stored as having been removed at date re‐
171 quested for restoration, it is simply not restored.
172 Thus if you restore in an empty directory you will
173 get all the files and directories you provided to
174 dar_manager in the state they have at the date you
175 asked. File that did not existed at that time will
176 not be restored. However you can restore over an
177 existing installation, dar will then warn you be‐
178 fore overwriting files (see -w and -n options for
179 dar) but will still not remove files that were
180 recorded removed from a previous archive of refer‐
181 ence. Note that files listed after -r option, must
182 never have an absolute path. They will be restored
183 under the directory specified with -R option of dar
184 (passed to dar using -o or -e options), or by de‐
185 fault, under the current directory.
186 -w, --when <date> alters the -r option behavior: still restores the
188 files in the most recent version available but only
189 before the given date (versions of more recent
190 dates are ignored). The <date> must respect the
191 following format [ [
192 [year/]month/]day-]hour:minute[:second]. For exam‐
193 ple "22:10" for 10 PM past 10 or the current day,
194 "7-22:10" for 10 PM past 10 the 7th of the current
195 month, "3/07-22:10" for the 7th of march at 22:10
196 of the current year, "2002/03/31-14:00:00" the date
197 of the first dar's release ;-). The given date must
198 be in the past, of course, and is compared to the
199 "last modification" date of the saved files and not
200 to the date at which archives have been done. Thus
201 if a file has been changed long ago but saved in a
202 recent (full) archive, it will be elected for
203 restoration even for dates older than the creation
204 of the archive. In the other way, a file saved long
205 time ago with a mtime that was set to a date in the
206 future will not be elected for restoration when
207 giving the date at which was done the archive.
208 Note that the provided date is relative to the system timezone
210 which is overriden if the TZ environement variable is set (see
211 tzselect(1) for more details)
212 -e, --extra <options>
214 pass some more options to dar. While the -o options
215 takes all that follows on the command line as argu‐
216 ment to pass to dar and write these in the data‐
217 base, the -e option does not alter the database and
218 has only one argument. In other words, if you need
219 to pass several options to dar through the use of
220 the -e option, you need to use quotes (simple
221 quotes ' or double quotes ") to enclose these op‐
222 tions. Example:
223 dar_manager -B database.dmd -e "-w -v -p -b -r -H 1" -r
225 some/files
226 while using -o option you must not use quotes:
228 dar_manager -B database.dmd -o -w -v -p -b -r -H 1
230 -u, --used <number> list the files that the given archive owns as last
232 version available. Thus when no file is listed, the
233 given archive is no more useful in database, and
234 can be removed safely (-D option). If <number> is
235 zero, all available file are listed, the status
236 provided for each file present in the database is
237 the most recent status. A negative number is al‐
238 lowed for this option (see -D option for details).
239 -f, --file <file> displays in which archive the given file is saved,
241 and what are the modification date (mtime) and
242 change date (ctime).
243 -s, --stats show the number of most recent files by archive.
245 This helps to determine which archive can be safely
246 removed from the database.
247 -m, --move <number> <number>
249 changes the order of archives in the database. The
250 first number is the number of the archive to move,
251 while the second is the place where it must be
252 shifted to.
253 Archive order is important: An old archive must
255 have a smaller index than a recent archive. If you
256 add archive to a database in the order they have
257 been created all should be fine. Else if a file has
258 a more recent version in an archive which index is
259 smaller, a warning will be issued (unless -ai op‐
260 tion is used). This can occur if by mistake you
261 added an archive to the database in the wrong order
262 (old archive added after a recent one), in that
263 case simply using the -m option will let you fix
264 this mistake. If instead the problem is relative to
265 a single file (or a small set of file), you should
266 wonder why this file has its modification date al‐
267 tered in a way that it pretends to be older than
268 its really is. Checking for the signs of a rootkit
269 may be a good idea.
270 -c, --check check the database consistency, in particular the
272 date ordering is verified and warning are issued
273 for each file having more recent version located in
274 an archive with a smaller index inside the data‐
275 base. -ai option makes -c option useless.
276 -N, --ignore-options-in-base
278 Do not use the options stored in database when
279 calling dar for restoration. This option is only
280 useful while restoring files from dar_manager, ei‐
281 ther directly (-r option) or using a batch file (-@
282 option, see below).
283 -k, --ignore-when-removed
285 By default, dar_manager does not ask dar to restore
286 file that have been removed at the requested date
287 (or in the latest state available). This is useful
288 for example to restore a directory in the state it
289 has at a given date (only files that existed at
290 that time are restored). However when you want to
291 restore a file that has been destroyed by accident,
292 you need to use -k option so you don't have to de‐
293 termine at which date that file existed to be be
294 able to ask dar_manager to restore that file in the
295 state it had before that date. In other words, -k
296 option gives a behavior of dar_manager backward
297 compatible with dar_manager released beside version
298 2.3.x of dar.
299 -ai, --alter=ignore-order
301 avoid dar_manager to issue a warning for each file
302 not following a chronological order of modification
303 date when the archive number in the database is
304 growing.
305 -@, --batch <filename>
307 allows you to do several operations on a given
308 database. All operations are defined in the pro‐
309 vided <filename> and refer to the same database as
310 defined by the -B switch on command line. This
311 batch file, must thus not contain neither -B, -C,
312 -i or -ai option (-ai are global to the batch oper‐
313 ation). The batch file expected layout is one com‐
314 mand per line, thus several arguments (like -l -v
315 for example) may take place on a given line of the
316 file (-v can be found both on command line for ver‐
317 bose output about the batch operation steps, as
318 well as inside the batch file for verbose output of
319 a particular batched command). Arguments are sepa‐
320 rated by spaces or tabs, other characters are
321 passed as-is. In consequence, you should only need
322 to use quotes (using " or ') if you intend to use
323 an argument containing space. Last, comments may be
324 placed on any line beginning by a hash character
325 (#).
326 -z, --compression <algo>
328 Only available while creating a database (-C op‐
329 tion), this option let you set the compression al‐
330 gorithm used to store the database in file. By de‐
331 fault gzip is use, but you can use "none" for no
332 compression, "bzip2", "xz" and "lzo" for other com‐
333 pression algorithm. Compression level selection may
334 be added in the future (level 9 is used inter‐
335 nally).
336 -Q Do not display any message on stderr when not
338 launched from a terminal (for example when launched
339 from an at job or crontab). Remains that any ques‐
340 tion to the user will be assumed a 'no' answer,
341 which most of the time will abort the program.
342 -v, --verbose displays additional information about what it is
344 doing.
345 -h, --help display help usage
347 -V, --version display software version
349
352 dar_manager exits with the following code:
353 0 Operation successful.
355 1 see dar manual page for signification
357 2 see dar manual page for signification
359 3 see dar manual page for signification
361 5 see dar manual page for signification
363 7 see dar manual page for signification
365 8 see dar manual page for signification
367 11 and above
369 dar
370 called from dar_manager has exited with non zero status.
371 Subtract 10 to this exit code to get dar's exit code.
372
375 dar_manager acts like dar (see dar man page for list of signals), upon
376 certain signal reception dar aborts cleanly
377
380 dar(1), dar_xform(1), dar_slave(1), dar_cp(1), dar_split(1)
381
384 at most 65534 archives can be compiled in a given database, which
385 should be enough for most users. Dar_manager does not support encrypted
386 archives for now and archive cannot neither be encrypted. See the FAQ
387 for a workaround.
388
391 http://sourceforge.net/p/dar/bugs/
392
395 http://dar.linux.free.fr/
396 Denis Corbin
397 France
398 Europe
3993rd Berkeley Distribution September 5th, 2020 DAR_MANAGER(1)