Backup Central

This is my first post to the mailing list. Love the
program. Thank you!!

I have two clients that performed full and incremental
backups for about a week, then stopped. I have tried
everything to get them to back up with no success. One
is running Solaris 7 (Gnu tar version 1.13.19) and the
other Red Hat Linux 7.3 (Gnu tar version 1.13.25).

BackupPC server is version 1.5.0 running on Red Hat
7.3, perl version 5.6.1.

There's no error message in the log, just this:

2003/3/24 15:30:00 full backup started for directory /
(xferPid=12609, tarPid=12608)
2003/3/24 19:14:55 cleaning up after signal ALRM

In the case of the Solaris client, I removed it from
the BackupPC hosts file, then re-named its backup
directory, then added it back to the hosts file -
essentially went back to baseline - and tried a full
backup. No luck.

I increased the {SmbClientTimeout} value to 10800.
Still no joy.

Would appreciate any help getting these guys backed
up!



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I have two clients that performed full and incremental
backups for about a week, then stopped. I have tried
everything to get them to back up with no success. One
is running Solaris 7 (Gnu tar version 1.13.19) and the
other Red Hat Linux 7.3 (Gnu tar version 1.13.25).

BackupPC server is version 1.5.0 running on Red Hat
7.3, perl version 5.6.1.

There's no error message in the log, just this:

2003/3/24 15:30:00 full backup started for directory /
(xferPid=12609, tarPid=12608)
2003/3/24 19:14:55 cleaning up after signal ALRM

I had this exact thing happen when I was trying to use compression, even
the part where they worked for a while, then stopped. I assume the
compression libs somehow got munged in my case; when I turned off
compression, it worked like a champ. I haven't tried to fix it yet, just
letting it operate with compression off. It's something to look into
anyhow...

Matt



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I have two clients that performed full and incremental
backups for about a week, then stopped. I have tried
everything to get them to back up with no success. One
is running Solaris 7 (Gnu tar version 1.13.19) and the
other Red Hat Linux 7.3 (Gnu tar version 1.13.25).

BackupPC server is version 1.5.0 running on Red Hat
7.3, perl version 5.6.1.

There's no error message in the log, just this:

2003/3/24 15:30:00 full backup started for directory /
(xferPid=12609, tarPid=12608)
2003/3/24 19:14:55 cleaning up after signal ALRM

Mark,

Please look in the XferLOG.bad file (XferLOG error file).
That contains the output from the backup.

The first couple of lines of this file show the full tar command
that was run.

It is possible that something has changed with your ssh configuration,
and it is now asking for a passphrase.

First, as the backuppc user, try running ssh manually, eg:

su backuppc
/usr/bin/ssh -l root host date

Next, try running this command manually and pipe the output to
tar tvf - , eg:

su backuppc
/usr/bin/ssh -l root host /bin/tar ..... | tar tvf -

Does this command run to completion?

By the way, have you excluded /proc? There could be some particularly
large files there.

Craig


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First of all, Matt - thanks for suggesting zero
compression. I tried that, but the backup failed.

--- cbarratt < at > users.sourceforge.net wrote:

Mark,

Please look in the XferLOG.bad file (XferLOG error
file). That contains the output from the backup.

Craig,

Neither of the machines that refuse to backup has a
XferLOG.bad. I found a XferLOG.bad.z in another host's
directory, but I was unable to view it, even using
gunzip and uncompress. How do you view that file?

The first couple of lines of this file show the full
tar command that was run.

I was able to see the entire tar command in the
XferLOG.

It is possible that something has changed with your
ssh configuration, and it is now asking for a
passphrase.

First, as the backuppc user, try running ssh
manually, eg:

su backuppc
/usr/bin/ssh -l root host date

That works fine on both machines.

Next, try running this command manually and pipe the
output to tar tvf - , eg:

su backuppc
/usr/bin/ssh -l root host /bin/tar ..... | tar
tvf -

Does this command run to completion?

No, it doesn't. I assume the command you want me to
try is actually the full tar command, not "/bin/tar
.....", right? When I do run the full tar command
which I found in the XferLOG, I get this error message
whether I run it either directly on the host or via
ssh on the server:

/bin/tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive

By the way, I get the above error on any host, whether
is is successful in backing up or not. I use gnu tar
on all the hosts.

By the way, have you excluded /proc? There could be
some particularly large files there.

Yup. I'm excluding /tmp and /proc

Thanks for the quick responses.


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"Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive" means tar was given the
command to create a tar but wasn't given a file/directory list. Or if a
directory was given, no recursion.

Double check your tar command.

- Wade



-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Wild [mailto:m7wild < at > yahoo.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 9:46 AM
To: backuppc-users < at > lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] Two machines quick backing up


First of all, Matt - thanks for suggesting zero
compression. I tried that, but the backup failed.

--- cbarratt < at > users.sourceforge.net wrote:

Mark,

Please look in the XferLOG.bad file (XferLOG error
file). That contains the output from the backup.

Craig,

Neither of the machines that refuse to backup has a
XferLOG.bad. I found a XferLOG.bad.z in another host's
directory, but I was unable to view it, even using
gunzip and uncompress. How do you view that file?

The first couple of lines of this file show the full
tar command that was run.

I was able to see the entire tar command in the
XferLOG.

It is possible that something has changed with your
ssh configuration, and it is now asking for a
passphrase.

First, as the backuppc user, try running ssh
manually, eg:

su backuppc
/usr/bin/ssh -l root host date

That works fine on both machines.

Next, try running this command manually and pipe the
output to tar tvf - , eg:

su backuppc
/usr/bin/ssh -l root host /bin/tar ..... | tar
tvf -

Does this command run to completion?

No, it doesn't. I assume the command you want me to
try is actually the full tar command, not "/bin/tar
.....", right? When I do run the full tar command
which I found in the XferLOG, I get this error message
whether I run it either directly on the host or via
ssh on the server:

/bin/tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive

By the way, I get the above error on any host, whether
is is successful in backing up or not. I use gnu tar
on all the hosts.

By the way, have you excluded /proc? There could be
some particularly large files there.

Yup. I'm excluding /tmp and /proc

Thanks for the quick responses.


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Thanks Wade. I do know that, but that's the response I
got when using the tar command per Craig's
instruction. The tar command is fine. It works
properly when given the filename to create.

Please email the complete tar command. The one you tried manually
didn't do anything: it must have been missing an argument. The goal
is to manually run exactly what BackupPC does and see what happens.

Craig


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--- cbarratt < at > users.sourceforge.net wrote:
Thanks Wade. I do know that, but that's the
response I
got when using the tar command per Craig's
instruction. The tar command is fine. It works
properly when given the filename to create.

Please email the complete tar command. The one you
tried manually
didn't do anything: it must have been missing an
argument. The goal
is to manually run exactly what BackupPC does and
see what happens.

Craig

Craig et al,

I'm happy to say that one of the two machines is now
backing up again after a reboot. The machine had been
up for 272 days and something other than tar was the
probable culprit. Next time a machine quits backing up
I'll try a reboot first.

The other machine is having problems that are
affecting issues in addition to backups, so I'll deal
with those separately.

Thank you for you help and suggestions!

Mark

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