Verify Archive?

[SirHumphreyAppleby]

Does there exist an option to verify archives on the server?

If not, I would like to request one be added.

While Cyphertite supports incremental archives, because I have data that is intended for long term storage which will never or rarely change, and other data which changes regularly, I have opted to monitor for changes myself and do full backups when changes occur. The most recent archive will always be kept, and any others older than 6 months will be deleted.

I don't really want new archives created when nothing has changed, because there is no facility to browse for change history, and it obscures when changes occurred. I did consider requesting Cyphertite add an option to not create a new ctfile if nothing had changed, but verification seems more sensible.

What I would like to be able to do, is request Cyphertite validate an archive against itself, checking what is in the ctfile matches what is on disk. I'm not sure exactly what is stored in the ctfiles, however if it already stores a checksum of the encrypted data, a validation option shouldn't be too complicated to add as it's just a special case of checking for duplicate data.

[tukoz]

Agree with HumphreyAppleby's proposal.
atm I check if the backups took place with ct -mt and test with cyphertite -xf <ctfile.ct>, which does not give the kind of strong garanty a verify distant archive would allow for.

[SirHumphreyAppleby]

I am presently restoring a few files from archives (I am changing how my data is stored, and made a small mistake in a script), and have so far found two files corrupt within an archive. These files were flagged as broken by Cyphertite, so at least I'm not being given broken files, but it does highlight the need for a verify archive option.

"Data missing on server: file [path/name], sha [checksum]: Operation failed"