Topic: smeserver-rdiff-backup

[dmay]

My USB drive does not auto mount,...

Sounds like your missing /etc/fstab details for your hardware. You might try manually adding something like this:

/dev/sda1 /media/usbdisk ext3 noauto 0 0

Darrell

[psoren]

Ok i sorted out my USB problem, it was actually mounting on /dev/usbdisk1.

Now if i try to make a backup with the default settings i get this:

Executing pre-backup event
Connecting to /media/usbdisk1
[mntent]: line 11 in /etc/fstab is bad
Performing rdiff-backup to /media/usbdisk1/rdiff-backup/9BD66936-9BE9-11DA-AE64-8E5A3C8248E7
Fatal Error: Fatal Error: The file specification
    '#------------------------------------------------------------'
cannot match any files in the base directory
    '/'
Useful file specifications begin with the base directory or some
pattern (such as '**') which matches the base directory.

And nothing happens on the USB disk.

If i the delete the "/" in front of all the lines i get this:

Executing pre-backup event
Connecting to /media/usbdisk1
[mntent]: line 11 in /etc/fstab is bad
Performing rdiff-backup to /media/usbdisk1/rdiff-backup/9BD66936-9BE9-11DA-AE64-8E5A3C8248E7
Fatal Error: Bad rdiff-backup-data dir on destination side

The rdiff-backup data directory
/media/usbdisk1/rdiff-backup/9BD66936-9BE9-11DA-AE64-8E5A3C8248E7/rdiff-backup-data
exists, but we cannot find a valid current_mirror marker.  You can
avoid this message by removing the rdiff-backup-data directory;
however any data in it will be lost.

Probably this error was caused because the first rdiff-backup session
into a new directory failed.  If this is the case it is safe to delete
the rdiff-backup-data directory because there is no important
information in it.

And the backup directory on the USB disk actually gets written but nothing more.

Per

[dmay]

[mntent]: line 11 in /etc/fstab is bad

You need to fix this reported error.

Fatal Error: Fatal Error: The file specification...

This was fixed in release 20. What are you using? Finally manually mount and delete /media/usbdisk1/rdiff-backup and start over.

Darrell

[psoren]

[mntent]: line 11 in /etc/fstab is bad

You need to fix this reported error.

Yes, thanks for pointing that out. I got that fixed now. "expand-template /etc/fstab" does not overwrite/renew fstab fully. Is that a normal behaviour?

This was fixed in release 20.

You didn't tell me there was a release 20
Anyway i got that installed now and the backup is running at the moment. I can't do more testing for now, i have to go away for a couple off weeks, but it looks good.

Per

[dmay]

release 21 will appears as soon as mirrors sync. Same highly experimental, do so at your own risk warning!

# rpm -qp --changelog smeserver-rdiff-backup-0.0.1-21dmay.noarch.rpm
* Tue Oct 31 2006 Darrell May <dmay@myezserver.com> 0.0.1-19dmay
- rename rdiff-backup-restore rdiff-backup-dr-restore
- added rdiff-backup-restore
- smeserver-rdiff-backup-0.0.1-21dmay.patch

FYI. Restoring data from your last backup is easy. Just use standard command line tools to mount, access and copy data from your backup drive.

However when restoring incremental data using the rdiff-backup command this easily turns very dangerous if you enter the wrong commands. AFAICT when you restore data it syncs your restore request to current data, essentially removing anything that doesn't match. So restores have to be handled VERY carefully.

In release 21 the rdiff-backup-restore action script recovers data from your backup, either latest (now) or to a defined past time (1D, 2D etc) and places the recovered data on your backup drive. Backups are found under $MOUNT/rdiff-backup and restores are placed under $MOUNT/rdiff-restore. It then launches Midnight Commander which you can use to complete the restore process to your system drive. This will make more sense when you run it and see it in action. The syntax is:

rdiff-backup-restore restore-as-of path-to-restore

Darrell

[psoren]

Hi,

It will not exclude the directories i specify. The rdiff-backub.exclude file looks like this:

/home/e-smith/files/ibays/bjarne_bu
/home/e-smith/files/ibays/covers
/home/e-smith/files/ibays/film
/home/e-smith/files/ibays/fop
/home/e-smith/files/ibays/images
/home/e-smith/files/ibays/musik
/

Is it the right format and is the last slash supposed to be on the last line?
I am on release 21.

Per

[dmay]

As you know, Gordon and I have been taking a look at rdiff-backup for some time. Gordon has been working with it a lot longer then I and pointed out to me an e-mail he received from the rdiff-backup-users mailing list. (see below) It appears that rdiff-backup has a few known bugs and is not being actively maintained. Due to this we've concluded that rdiff-backup is not worthy of further attention. I have therefore removed the rpms from my contrib area and ask that anyone testing please do the same and remove the rpm from your test server.

I have returned to working on my original contrib which was based on rsync and will release an updated rpm shortly, announced on another thread.

Darrell

-----Original Message-----
From: rdiff-backup-users-bounces On Behalf Of dean gaudet
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 2:55 PM
To: Keith Edmunds
Cc: rdiff-backup-users@nongnu.org
Subject: Re: [rdiff-backup-users] rdiff-backup being maintained?

On Tue, 31 Oct 2006, Keith Edmunds wrote:

> Ben, are you still reading this? Dean?

i'm here...

rdiff-backup just hasn't been at the top of my list for a while.  mostly
because i have a setup which works and there's a zillion other things with
higher priority right now.

i'm still using rdiff-backup 1.0.x cvs branch (there's a patch or two in
there beyond 1.0.4 release).  i only use linux -> linux, and only ext3/xfs
filesystems.

most of the stuff i've seen going across the list are 1.1.5 bugs, osx
bugs, windoze boxes, linux samba bugs, etc.  just not anything i'm excited
about working on, and i frequently can't even review such patches because
i don't have such a test setup.

there are a few bugs which could affect me -- such as the disk full issues
-- but my backup target disk has a heck of a lot of free space.

sorry

but this shouldn't stop anyone else from contributing patches.

-dean

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