rik (Recursive Integrity Keeper)

Overview

rik (Recursive Integrity Keeper) is a Python wrapper around the par2cmdline tool. It allows recursive calculation and verification of Reed-Solomon error correction codes for your files. These codes can be used to restore file content in case of damage, making rik particularly useful for long-term archiving.

To create error correction codes, run rik create -i par2 ./ in your directory. rik will recursively process the directory contents, generating Reed-Solomon codes for each file it encounters. To verify the integrity of your files with the generated codes, use the command rik verify -i par2 ./. At the end, the comprehensive summary of results will be printed. If any corrupted files are found, the generated Reed-Solomon codes can be used to restore them.

Installation

Prerequisites

rik uses par2cmdline as its backend. Ensure that par2cmdline is installed and available in your system's PATH before proceeding.

Development version

To install the development version of rik, use the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/usert5432/rik
cd rik
python3 -m pip install -e .

PyPI version

Alternatively, rik can be installed from the PyPI repository:

python3 -m pip install rik

Usage

1. Creating Reed-Solomon Codes

To calculate Reed-Solomon codes for a directory DIR, run:

rik create -i par2 DIR

This command will recursively process the contents of the directory tree starting from DIR. For each file encountered, it will calculate Reed-Solomon error correction codes and save them in a .par2 subdirectory next to the original file.

2. Verifying File Integrity

To verify file integrity using previously calculated Reed-Solomon codes for a directory DIR, one can use:

rik verify -i par2 DIR

A comprehensive summary of the verification process will be printed at the end.

3. Customizing Redundancy Level

You can pass arguments directly to the par2cmdline command. For instance, it is possible to to specify redundancy level with:

rik create -i par2 DIR -- -r10

This argument will make par2cmdline create 10% redundancy.

4. Filtering Files

rik supports several filters to include/exclude files based on their paths and sizes. For example,

• Calculate error correction codes only for files smaller than 100 MB:

rik create -i par2 -s '<100M' DIR

• Calculate error correction codes only for files outside of .cache directories:

rik create -i par2 --exclude .cache DIR

License

This project is distributed under the BSD 2-Clause License - refer to the the LICENSE file for details.