Info
----

    archeck is a program that keeps track of all files in a directory (an
    "archive"), making sure that every time the archeck is run that the
    archive contains at least all the files it had last time archeck was run
    on it. If any new files are added, archeck will start keeping track of
    those in the same way.

    I personally use it for backup verification. I have an "archive"
    directory on my system which contains files that should never change
    (pictures, music, stuff I wrote, backups of other smaller, frequently
    changing directories...).  Anything that is put into the archive should
    always remain there intact and never change or get lost. I wrote archeck
    to enforce that and make sure my backups of my archive never lose
    anything.

Installation
------------

    You'll need Python 2.3 or higher (http://www.python.org) installed to
    run it. Once you have that just copy archeck.py to wherever you like and
    it should work. It might work on Windows too (I've never tested it
    though).

Usage
-----

    First, create an empty file which will be the archeck data file. You can
    put this file anywhere you want.

    Next, you can run archeck (at the command line) for the first time to
    add stuff to that data file like this:

    % archeck -r /path/to/archive/directory -d /path/to/data/file/just/created

    It will spit out something like this:

    archeck started at 2006-09-01 10:11:16
    ADDED: b727678872225b9c680e766c809b9bf1: ['/music/song.mp3']
    ADDED: f9dcc1b3b58c95fddfbc2989ea3361d5: ['/pics/zmachine_1024_768.jpg']
    ADDED: e58d666df0d6cc6e87a7e48440d637e9: ['/text.txt']
    ADDED: 5f4eb3810a3d9ed0e2ae992c423fea99: ['/music/mp3file.mp3']
    4 file(s) were ADDED to the archive
    0 file(s) were MISSING from the archive
    SUCCESS: All files accounted for.
    Data file saved to /tmp/datafile
    archeck finished at 2006-09-01 10:11:16

    If you look at that data file now you'll see some stuff in it.

    Now to verify the archive, just run archeck the same way at any time:

    % archeck -r /path/to/archive/directory -d /path/to/data/file/just/created
    archeck started at 2006-09-01 10:11:45
    0 file(s) were ADDED to the archive
    0 file(s) were MISSING from the archive
    SUCCESS: All files accounted for.
    Data file saved to /tmp/datafile
    archeck finished at 2006-09-01 10:11:45

    If all files were accounted for it will display the SUCCESS message
    above and save the new data file. If anything is missing (gone or
    changed) however:

    archeck started at 2006-09-01 10:12:28
    ADDED: fecc3bc52df068273d9f2f544af9a3df: ['/text.txt']
    MISSING: b727678872225b9c680e766c809b9bf1: ['/music/song.mp3']
    MISSING: e58d666df0d6cc6e87a7e48440d637e9: ['/text.txt']
    1 file(s) were ADDED to the archive
    2 file(s) were MISSING from the archive
    FAILURE: Some files were missing.
    archeck finished at 2006-09-01 10:12:28

    In this example I altered the 'text.txt' file and deleted 'song.mp3'.
    Notice that it did not save a new datafile.

    If the changes above were intentional, you can make archeck write out a
    new datafile in the event of a failure like this with the -f option:

    % archeck.py -r /tmp/archive -d /tmp/datafile -f /tmp/datafile.fail
    archeck started at 2006-09-01 10:14:09
    ADDED: fecc3bc52df068273d9f2f544af9a3df: ['/text.txt']
    MISSING: b727678872225b9c680e766c809b9bf1: ['/music/song.mp3']
    MISSING: e58d666df0d6cc6e87a7e48440d637e9: ['/text.txt']
    1 file(s) were ADDED to the archive
    2 file(s) were MISSING from the archive
    FAILURE: Some files were missing.
    Data file saved to /tmp/datafile.fail
    archeck finished at 2006-09-01 10:14:09

    Now if you approve of these changes and want archeck to proceed
    normally, just copy the the fail datafile to the normal one and re-run:

    % mv /tmp/datafile.fail /tmp/datafile
    % archeck -r /tmp/archive -d /tmp/datafile -f /tmp/datafile.fail
    archeck started at 2006-09-01 10:15:11
    0 file(s) were ADDED to the archive
    0 file(s) were MISSING from the archive
    SUCCESS: All files accounted for.
    Data file saved to /tmp/datafile
    archeck finished at 2006-09-01 10:15:11

    And if you want the log output above written to a log file, you can do
    that with the -l option.

Contact
-------

    Author: Steve Benson <devct at s dot rhythm dot cx>
    Project Homepage: http://www.rhythm.cx/~steve/devel/archeck