Avamar: How to use the client logs to identify which files are new or changed since the previous backup

This article shows how to set Avamar client logging to identify which files avtar believes treated as modified or new since the previous backup.

To enable this, before running a backup, set the flag 'verbose' to 3.

This can be set in one of the following ways.

• In the avtar.cmd file in the client's "avs" directory, add a new line containing "--verbose=3".
• During a manual backup, add a flag using 'More Options' -> Avamar Administrator during a manual backup.

New logging output:

When set, the next time a backup is run, new, or modified files will be listed as part of the backup output in the following format.
 

2014-10-18 11:15:32 ---------- pcuser/Domain Users         58 100% 2014-10-18 11:11:15 C:\myfiles\changed.txt.txt
2014-10-18 11:15:32 ---------- pcuser/Domain Users        118 100% 2014-10-18 11:11:35 C:\myfiles\new file.txt

From the example above:

• The file changed.txt was an existing single-line text file that was modified. 58 is the number of characters in that file.
• The file.txt was a new file that was created in myfiles since the previous backup. 118 is the number of characters in the file, including carriage returns.

For more information about how avtar detects if a file has changed, see:  

• Avamar client - What has to change before avtar considers a file to have been modified?