Rtiff-backup fatal errors, matching increments found?

Question

I run rdiff-backup to backup some folders on a remote system.

rdiff-backup root@ <REMOTESERVER>::/apps/myapp/shared/system /home/backups/system echo "$(date): Completed... removing backup data older than 4 weeks" rdiff-backup --remove-older-than 4W /home/backups/system echo "$(date): Completed..." 

Doing this leads to errors, although in the -remove-old-than command:

 Fatal Error: Found 81 relevant increments, dated: Wed Aug 29 00:41:47 2012 Thu Aug 30 00:57:49 2012 Fri Aug 31 01:04:03 2012 Sat Sep 1 00:44:59 2012 Sun Sep 2 00:41:49 2012 Mon Sep 3 00:41:39 2012 If you want to delete multiple increments in this way, use the --force. 

So yes, I can probably just put power on him, but I would like to understand what is happening here, and could not find much of this problem.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Just rdiff-backup make sure you really understand it. The usual workflow for --remove-older-than should start regularly, removing only the oldest increment. To avoid data loss, rdiff-backup requires you to be sure before allowing you to delete multiple increments at once.