Backup Central

Hi,

I have a problem that's manifesting itself with both rdiff-backup 1.0.3
and 1.1.5 on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.3. I also have xattrs installed from
<http://pythonmac.org/packages/xattr-0.2-py2.4-macosx10.4.zip>, if that
information helps. Now, the problem is as follows: I have an external
FireWire HDD mounted as /Volumes/Backup, and am backing up from and to
identical filesystems (HFS+, case insensitive, journaled)

# sudo rdiff-backup /Applications /Volumes/Backup/Applications

will produce

drwx------ 2 root aszegedi 68 Jan 3 23:41 Applications

whereas the original was

drwxrwxr-x 64 root admin 2176 Mar 31 2005 Applications

(don't bother with file sizes - I stopped it before it finished)

So, the group and the mode of the created directory is plain bad. Also,
all content inside directory is also drwx------ and with same owner/group.
What's even more interesting is that if I copy a directory named "test"
from my home directory:

# sudo rdiff-backup ~/test /Volumes/Backup/test

it will perfectly move the uid/gid and access mode. *Even* if I try to
make it as similar to Applications as possible (that is, I do chown root
and chgrp admin and chmod 775 on it first). *Even* if I move it to / first
and then do

# sudo rm -r /Volumes/Backup/test
# sudo rdiff-backup /test /Volumes/Backup/test

Even tried renaming test to Test, and then doing the rdiff-backup, and it
still works okay. However, for /Applications (or /Developer, etc.) it
consistently produces incorrect information. As a last resort, I tried a
completely local copy within the local drive, thinking that maybe
something's wrong with permissions on the FireWire drive:

# sudo rdiff-backup /Applications ~/Applications

And still the same story - the copy in my home directory also has the bad
permissions and gid. I'm rather keen on having correct permissions as I
want to have an "uber-backup" that's both incremental, mirror, and -
bootable. For bootability, I really need to have permissions and gid
information transferred correctly. Any help appreciated - if you need me
to inject debugging statements into the rdiff-backup's python source, just
say what and where.

Thanks in advance,
Attila.

--
home: http://www.szegedi.org

<embarassed>
Ok people, please disregard my previous post, I figured out it's a false
alarm. I have now sifted through the source code and realized I was just
being impatient (the /Applications directory is big, and takes a while to
back up). Studying the code showed that the directory permissions are set
to rwx------ only while rdiff-backup works inside the directory (rather
logical), once it's done it'll set the correct permissions and ownership.
Sure enough once I let it finish backing it up, I saw correct permissions.
</embarassed>

Now I only need to figure out a way to have it play nicely with FileVault
- I guess mounting a similar encrypted sparse image in the backup
directory tree and using --force will do the trick.

Attila.

On Wed, 04 Jan 2006 00:11:24 +0100, Attila Szegedi <attila < at > szegedi.org>
wrote:

Hi,

I have a problem that's manifesting itself with both rdiff-backup 1.0.3
and 1.1.5 on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.3. I also have xattrs installed from
<http://pythonmac.org/packages/xattr-0.2-py2.4-macosx10.4.zip>, if that
information helps. Now, the problem is as follows: I have an external
FireWire HDD mounted as /Volumes/Backup, and am backing up from and to
identical filesystems (HFS+, case insensitive, journaled)

# sudo rdiff-backup /Applications /Volumes/Backup/Applications

will produce

drwx------ 2 root aszegedi 68 Jan 3 23:41 Applications

whereas the original was

drwxrwxr-x 64 root admin 2176 Mar 31 2005 Applications

(don't bother with file sizes - I stopped it before it finished)

So, the group and the mode of the created directory is plain bad. Also,
all content inside directory is also drwx------ and with same
owner/group.
What's even more interesting is that if I copy a directory named "test"
from my home directory:

# sudo rdiff-backup ~/test /Volumes/Backup/test

it will perfectly move the uid/gid and access mode. *Even* if I try to
make it as similar to Applications as possible (that is, I do chown root
and chgrp admin and chmod 775 on it first). *Even* if I move it to /
first and then do

# sudo rm -r /Volumes/Backup/test
# sudo rdiff-backup /test /Volumes/Backup/test

Even tried renaming test to Test, and then doing the rdiff-backup, and
it still works okay. However, for /Applications (or /Developer, etc.) it
consistently produces incorrect information. As a last resort, I tried a
completely local copy within the local drive, thinking that maybe
something's wrong with permissions on the FireWire drive:

# sudo rdiff-backup /Applications ~/Applications

And still the same story - the copy in my home directory also has the
bad permissions and gid. I'm rather keen on having correct permissions
as I want to have an "uber-backup" that's both incremental, mirror, and
- bootable. For bootability, I really need to have permissions and gid
information transferred correctly. Any help appreciated - if you need me
to inject debugging statements into the rdiff-backup's python source,
just say what and where.

Thanks in advance,
Attila.