"Smart remove" is not that smart

[gstaniak]

"Smart remove" have just removed all of my 2009 "monthly" backups but the last one, thus reducing the span of the backups from more than 6 months to just two weeks. I know it's just following the rules ("keep one snapshot per year for all previous years"), but this is just plain stupid, guys. From the point of view of backup user this doesn't make any sense at all. Please change the baheviour to something sensible, like "keep one snapshot per month for the LAST TWELVE MONTHS irrespective of what year are they, and THEN one snapshot per year". Fortunately I'm not in need of restoring anything right now and I do keep separate DVD backups of important stuff anyway, but others may not be so lucky. It doesn't make any sense at all to simply wipe the backup disk clean of monthlies just because we have a new year.

Happy new year to you all anyway, keep up the good work. I really like this app.

[Dan (danleweb)]

OK, the new rule will be "keep one snapshot per month for all previous months of this year and all months of the last year".

[gstaniak (gstaniak)]

Great. Thanks a lot. A good app has just got better ;)

[Ryan Ahearn (ryan-c-ahearn)]

What version was this actually released in? It looks like the backintime in Ubuntu Maverick still has this bug present.

[Dan (danleweb)]

This was fixed in BIT 1.0 available in stable ppa only.
Ubuntu only packaged 0.9.26. I this 1.0 was released to late.

[Holstener Liesel (holstenerliesel)]

So I guess this means Maverick users are going to have their 2010 backups deleted by smart remove in January 2011? In that case I think you should seriously consider fixing this in 0.9.26, too.

[Dan (danleweb)]

0.9.26 was the last stable version. The new one is 1.0. You can install it from the stable ppa but I don't know if and when this version will be included in ubuntu standard repository.