"Smart Remove" together with "if free space / inodes less than"

[janekbettinger]

Hi,

using "smart remove" together with the settings "if free space less than" (resp. "if free inodes less than") might lead to (probably) unintended behavior as BiT would remove the oldest snapshot if the space / inodes threshold is reached no matter what is defined for smart remove.
Instead of having the oldest snapshot deleted the user might want to adjust the smart remove settings.

Suggestions:

• show a warning when the user enables both settings at the same time or
• disallow to enable both features at the same time

If you think about the settings, BiT's current behavior makes sense ideed, however, it might not be that intuitive. BiT should make sure that the user completely understands when a snapshot is deleted (as this is crucial for a backup tool).

Best regards,
kroka

[buhtz]

@janekbettinger There is a new forming maintaining team and we do review all issues. Thanks for your report. We do agree.

Tags: Enhancement, GUI (but not only), Medium priority, maybe Documentation

[buhtz]

Dear Janek,
this Issue came up again in #1679 .

Maybe you want to join the discussion. We need suggestions about how the Auto-remove dialog should look like to make the behavior clear to the users.

You suggested an extra warning dialog. I don't like an message box. Maybe a red colored text label appearing in the dialog if both options are enabled?

Kind
Christian

[buhtz]

To summarize the issue:
The free inodes/space rules executed at last, after the smart remove rules. Backups that would be kept because of a smart remove rule could be removed one step later with the free inodes/space rule.

This should be clear to the user of course. A combination of redesigning the GUI and documentation would IMHO help.

[buhtz]

Might not be directly relevant to this issue. But I investigated the current auto-/smart-remove behavior and documented it. I found inconsistent behavior and minor bugs. There is a lot potential to improve and refactoring.

Before starting with this I would like to request your opinions and suggestions about the next steps. Please see the issue #1945 for details and a mockup for the new auto-remove dialog-tab.

Feedback and suggestions welcome. We appreciate your feedback.