Backup Central

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to create a backup of my system configuration using
rdiff-backup. The idea is to have a backup of `/etc' and a few dotfiles
in `$HOME' just in case I screw something up. Ideally this backup should
be performed by a cron job.

rdiff-backup is called as
rdiff-backup --include-globbing-filelist file_list \
/ $HOME/.backup/local

where `file_list' looks like
- /**~
- /.*.swp
- /**/.*.swp
/etc
/home/username/.ssh/config
- /

The problem: As soon as I put any file inside home into `file_list' the
following error message appears and the backup fails.
[Errno 13] Permission denied: '/home/username/.gvfs'

Adding `- /home/username/.gvfs' to the file list doesn't help.

Googling around revealed, that this is a known problem and has to do
with fuse [1,2]. [1] even says this issue would be solved in the cvs
version. I've tried 1.2.8, 1.3.3 and the latest cvs version. All produce
the same error message.
The exact error message is attached to the mail.

I had a look at the code myself, but it's not clear to me where to
handle this case. Non readable files should produce an error if they are
listed as source or destination. But, I do _not_ want to backup `.gvfs'
so it should _not_ produce an error...

A quick hack around this is given in [2]. But, it's definitely not an
option for a cron job.

Best,
Andreas

[1]
http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/two-way-mirrors-of-external-mailing-lists-3/rdiff-backup-23/rdiff-backup-trying-to-access-gvfs-even-though-it-is-exc-93726/
[2] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=783935



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Hi, does
--exclude-other-filesystems
get rid of that?

Regards,
Jakob

On 15.05.2011 00:45, Andreas Herrmann wrote:
Hello everyone,

I'm trying to create a backup of my system configuration using
rdiff-backup. The idea is to have a backup of `/etc' and a few dotfiles
in `$HOME' just in case I screw something up. Ideally this backup should
be performed by a cron job.

rdiff-backup is called as
rdiff-backup --include-globbing-filelist file_list \
/ $HOME/.backup/local

where `file_list' looks like
- /**~
- /.*.swp
- /**/.*.swp
/etc
/home/username/.ssh/config
- /

The problem: As soon as I put any file inside home into `file_list' the
following error message appears and the backup fails.
[Errno 13] Permission denied: '/home/username/.gvfs'

Adding `- /home/username/.gvfs' to the file list doesn't help.

Googling around revealed, that this is a known problem and has to do
with fuse [1,2]. [1] even says this issue would be solved in the cvs
version. I've tried 1.2.8, 1.3.3 and the latest cvs version. All produce
the same error message.
The exact error message is attached to the mail.

I had a look at the code myself, but it's not clear to me where to
handle this case. Non readable files should produce an error if they are
listed as source or destination. But, I do _not_ want to backup `.gvfs'
so it should _not_ produce an error...

A quick hack around this is given in [2]. But, it's definitely not an
option for a cron job.

Best,
Andreas

[1]
http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/two-way-mirrors-of-external-mailing-lists-3/rdiff-backup-23/rdiff-backup-trying-to-access-gvfs-even-though-it-is-exc-93726/
[2] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=783935





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On Sun, 2011-05-15 at 14:41 +0200, Jakob Unterwurzacher wrote:
Hi, does
--exclude-other-filesystems
get rid of that?
It might. But /home is also on a different filesystem than /. And I
don't want to exclude /home.

Turns out putting `- /home/username/.gvfs' at the very top of the file
list solves the problem. The error message still appears, but is
ignored.

Best, Andreas


PS: I just saw, that I accidentally answered to Dominic Raferd directly
and not to the mailing list.
Why isn't the reply-to field set?
I'll append that mail here.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Andreas Herrmann
To: Dominic Raferd
Subject: Re: [rdiff-backup-users] [Errno 13] Permission denied:
'/home/username/.gvfs'
Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 11:07:00 +0200

On Sun, 2011-05-15 at 08:35 +0100, Dominic Raferd wrote:
I have never used the --include-globbing-filelist, only the
--exclude-globbing-filelist, but here are some suggestions:

Try: run the command with sudo [for cron: put in /etc/crontab]
Sorry, forgot to mention that. I'm already running it with sudo.

Or: add '- /home/username/.gvfs' at the *top* of your filelist (if
you
haven't already tried it there)
Hmm, I'm pretty sure I already tried that. But now it works, when I
put
that at the top of the list. Thanks!

What has fuse got to do with it? Fuse is not normally used by
rdiff-backup. However I do successfully use rdiff-backup to backup
a
remote /home directory mounted using sshfs, so it can work.
That is explained in [1]. Fuse limits access to its mounts to the
exact
user who fuse-mounted it. Not even root is allowed access or even stat
such files.

Best, Andreas

[1]

http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/two-way-mirrors-of-external-mailing-lists-3/rdiff-backup-23/rdiff-backup-trying-to-access-gvfs-even-though-it-is-exc-93726/
[2] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=783935

$ rdiff-backup --version
rdiff-backup 1.3.3


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Fuse limits access to its mounts to the exact
user who fuse-mounted it. Not even root is allowed access or even stat
such files.

You can widen fuse access by putting 'user_allow_other' in
/etc/fuse.conf and using '-o allow_other' (or equivalent, this is for
sshfs) for the fuse filesystem mount command.

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On Mon, 2011-05-16 at 10:01 +0100, Dominic Raferd wrote:
Fuse limits access to its mounts to the exact
user who fuse-mounted it. Not even root is allowed access or even stat
such files.

You can widen fuse access by putting 'user_allow_other' in
/etc/fuse.conf and using '-o allow_other' (or equivalent, this is for
sshfs) for the fuse filesystem mount command.
Thanks, that's good to know.
There is a fuse-fs for browsing rdiff-backup repositories [1].
Passing options to fuse is going to be enabled in the next release. With
allow_user set I should be able to mount my config backup as root, but
browse it as a user.

There's also a nice way to automatically exclude filesystems that do not
correspond to block devices listed in /dev. E.g. proc, tmpfs, but also
fuse.

Haven't tried it yet, but this should work:
rdiff-backup --exclude-filelist <(grep -v '\(^/dev/\|^rootfs\)' /proc/mounts | cut -d \ -f 2 | uniq) \
<other options>

Best, Andreas

[1] http://code.google.com/p/rdiff-backup-fs/


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There is a fuse-fs for browsing rdiff-backup repositories [1].
Passing options to fuse is going to be enabled in the next release. With
allow_user set I should be able to mount my config backup as root, but
browse it as a user.

There's also a nice way to automatically exclude filesystems that do not
correspond to block devices listed in /dev. E.g. proc, tmpfs, but also
fuse.

Haven't tried it yet, but this should work:
rdiff-backup --exclude-filelist<(grep -v '\(^/dev/\|^rootfs\)' /proc/mounts | cut -d \ -f 2 | uniq) \
<other options>

Best, Andreas

[1] http://code.google.com/p/rdiff-backup-fs/

Yes I am aware of rdiff-backup-fs (but others may not be, so thanks for
the reminder). It is the successor to archfs. I am waiting for it get
beyond 1.0.0 too. I use rdiffweb (0.6.3) which works well.

Thanks for the tip re excluding filesystems.

Dominic
http://www.timedicer.co.uk


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