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NAME

       bup-margin - figure out your deduplication safety margin

SYNOPSIS

       bup margin

DESCRIPTION

       bup margin  iterates  through  all  objects  in  your  bup  repository,
       calculating the largest number of prefix bits shared  between  any  two
       entries.   This  number,  n, identifies the longest subset of SHA–1 you
       could use and still encounter a collision between your object ids.

       For example, one system that was tested had a collection of 11  million
       objects  (70 GB), and bup margin returned 45.  That means a 46-bit hash
       would be sufficient to avoid all collisions among that set of  objects;
       each  object  in  that  repository  could be uniquely identified by its
       first 46 bits.

       The number of bits needed seems to increase by about 1 or 2  for  every
       doubling  of  the number of objects.  Since SHA–1 hashes have 160 bits,
       that leaves 115 bits of margin.  Of course, because  SHA–1  hashes  are
       essentially  random,  it’s theoretically possible to use many more bits
       with far fewer objects.

       If you’re paranoid about the possibility of SHA–1 collisions,  you  can
       monitor  your  repository  by running bup margin occasionally to see if
       you’re getting dangerously close to 160 bits.

EXAMPLE

             $ bup margin
             Reading indexes: 100.00% (11188299/11188299), done.
             45

SEE ALSO

       bup-midx(1), bup-save(1)

BUP

       Part of the bup(1) suite.

AUTHORS

       Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>.