Backup Central

Dear list:

A friend of mine told me last night about rdiff-backup. He seemed
enthusiastic about it, urged me to try it out.

I run Debian linux 3.1 on my office system, and need to backup various data
files from several folders, over a DSL connection to my home machine, also
running Debian 3.1. Both home and work machines have rdiff-backup version
0.13.4-5 installed. I have run 'rdiff-backup --test-server localmachine
remotemachine' and got a successful report back at the prompt.

Yet, when I attempt to run rdiff-backup with anything from /local/folder
user < at > remotemachine.com::/remote/folder I get the following errors
consistently:

scott < at > fyrenice:~$ rdiff-backup /home/scott/assist
scott < at > zugraum.com::/home/scott/rdb
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Detected abilities for source (read only) file system:
Access control lists Off
Extended attributes Off
Mac OS X style resource forks Off
Mac OS X Finder information Off
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Warning: ownership cannot be changed on filesystem at
/home/scott/rdb/rdiff-backup-data
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Detected abilities for destination (read/write) file system:
Characters needing quoting ''
Ownership changing Off
Hard linking On
fsync() directories On
Directory inc permissions On
Access control lists Off
Extended attributes Off
Mac OS X style resource forks Off
Mac OS X Finder information Off
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Fatal Error: Bad rdiff-backup-data dir on
destination side

The rdiff-backup data directory
/home/scott/rdb/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.


Not sure why my email does that to text pasted into it , but there's the
output.

This is indeed the first backup session with rdiff-backup. But I fail to
understand why it would fail outright when the --test-server option worked,
a la:

scott < at > fyrenice:~$ rdiff-backup --test-server
scott < at > zugraum.com::/home/scott/rdb
Testing server started by: ssh -C scott < at > zugraum.com rdiff-backup --server
Server OK

Can someone help me figure this out?

Scott

Dr. Scott S. Jones wrote:
This is indeed the first backup session with rdiff-backup. But I fail to
understand why it would fail outright when the --test-server option worked,

Scott, make sure the remote destination directory is completely empty
before you start (it isn't right now).

Keith

--
Keith Edmunds

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Tiger Computing Ltd | Helping businesses make the most of Linux |
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+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

Resend: I intended this to go to the mailing list, but there is no
reply-to specified in the message. Why not BTW?

Dr. Scott S. Jones wrote:
Dear list:

A friend of mine told me last night about rdiff-backup. He seemed
enthusiastic about it, urged me to try it out.

I run Debian linux 3.1 on my office system, and need to backup various data
files from several folders, over a DSL connection to my home machine, also
running Debian 3.1. Both home and work machines have rdiff-backup version
0.13.4-5 installed. I have run 'rdiff-backup --test-server localmachine
remotemachine' and got a successful report back at the prompt.

Yet, when I attempt to run rdiff-backup with anything from /local/folder
user < at > remotemachine.com::/remote/folder I get the following errors
consistently:

scott < at > fyrenice:~$ rdiff-backup /home/scott/assist
scott < at > zugraum.com::/home/scott/rdb
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Detected abilities for source (read only) file system:
Access control lists Off
Extended attributes Off
Mac OS X style resource forks Off
Mac OS X Finder information Off
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Warning: ownership cannot be changed on filesystem at
/home/scott/rdb/rdiff-backup-data
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Detected abilities for destination (read/write) file system:
Characters needing quoting ''
Ownership changing Off
Hard linking On
fsync() directories On
Directory inc permissions On
Access control lists Off
Extended attributes Off
Mac OS X style resource forks Off
Mac OS X Finder information Off
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Fatal Error: Bad rdiff-backup-data dir on
destination side

The rdiff-backup data directory
/home/scott/rdb/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.


Not sure why my email does that to text pasted into it , but there's the
output.

This is indeed the first backup session with rdiff-backup. But I fail to
understand why it would fail outright when the --test-server option worked,
a la:

scott < at > fyrenice:~$ rdiff-backup --test-server
scott < at > zugraum.com::/home/scott/rdb
Testing server started by: ssh -C scott < at > zugraum.com rdiff-backup --server
Server OK

Can someone help me figure this out?

Scott

The simple answer, and the only one I can come up with just now, is that
there are/is file(s) in your destination-dir. do an "ls -a" and see.

Wiebe Cazemier <halfgaar < at > gmail.com> writes:

Resend: I intended this to go to the mailing list, but there is no
reply-to specified in the message. Why not BTW?

Because reply-to specifies the address to send replies back to the
sender of the original mail. Why would the mailing list software
change that when the sender is the only one who could possible have an
opinion about it?

When writing an answer to an email to a mailing, you either want to
send a reply to the person who wrote the email, or you want to send a
follow-up to the list. There is no way for the mailing list software
to guess what you might want to do, and mailing lists that add a
reply-to that points to the list effectively removes one of the two
choices for you.

--
David Kågedal

Wiebe Cazemier <halfgaar < at > gmail.com> writes:

David Kågedal wrote:
Because reply-to specifies the address to send replies back to the
sender of the original mail. Why would the mailing list software
change that when the sender is the only one who could possible have an
opinion about it?
When writing an answer to an email to a mailing, you either want to
send a reply to the person who wrote the email, or you want to send a
follow-up to the list. There is no way for the mailing list software
to guess what you might want to do, and mailing lists that add a
reply-to that points to the list effectively removes one of the two
choices for you.

That may be, this is the only mailing list I'm active on which does that. When
you ask a question in a public place, it would make sense to put the answer
there too, for others to see, right? If no-one would send replies back to the
list, you'd get a list full of questions, but no answers. That shouldn't be the
case... IMO, the default reply address should be that of the list.

Then send your reply to the list instead of to the sender. As I said,
it's up to you to send your follow-up to the destination you intend,
and your mailer should be able to help you with that. But, as I said,
nobody but yourself knows if you want to send something to the sender
of the mail you're commenting, or to the list.

--
David Kågedal