Backup Central

Greetings all,
I have 2 questions, but first some background. We've been using
rdiff-backup for about 6 months and it's been fantastic. Unfortunately,
we lost some disks in our storage enclosure (which held the rdiffs) and
had to start from scratch. I have now restored the rdiffs back to the
enclosure from tape. Rdiff-backup lists all the increments fine.
However, now I'm trying to run a subsequent backup to the restored
rdiff-backup location and it errors immediately. I believe that the
pertinent error is this:

OSError: [Errno 5] Input/output error:
'/backup/yellowstone/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-backup.tmp.0'

So I have 2 questions. First, what is the function of this
rdiff-backup.tmp.0 file? I'm guessing it's a temp file used only by
rdiff-backup during a backup. My first thought were permissions, maybe
rdiff-backup couldn't create this file, but I was able to create it
manually. Second question is: What kinds of things might cause this
OSError? I've already looked at permissions and they seem fine.

I've tried searching the list archives and google, but have been
unsuccessful. Thanks in advance for your help.

-Tommy

--
Thomas S. Dixon
Senior Applications Analyst
MUSC - Pediatric Cardiology

On 17 Aug 2004, "Thomas S. Dixon" <dixont < at > musc.edu> wrote:
Greetings all,
I have 2 questions, but first some background. We've been using
rdiff-backup for about 6 months and it's been fantastic. Unfortunately,
we lost some disks in our storage enclosure (which held the rdiffs) and
had to start from scratch. I have now restored the rdiffs back to the
enclosure from tape. Rdiff-backup lists all the increments fine.
However, now I'm trying to run a subsequent backup to the restored
rdiff-backup location and it errors immediately. I believe that the
pertinent error is this:

OSError: [Errno 5] Input/output error:
'/backup/yellowstone/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-backup.tmp.0'

So I have 2 questions. First, what is the function of this
rdiff-backup.tmp.0 file? I'm guessing it's a temp file used only by
rdiff-backup during a backup. My first thought were permissions, maybe
rdiff-backup couldn't create this file, but I was able to create it
manually. Second question is: What kinds of things might cause this
OSError? I've already looked at permissions and they seem fine.

Hi,

Errno 5 is EIO = "input/output error". (At least it is on Linux, and
many others, and that'd be consistent with this message.) This
usually indicates an actual IO error, i.e. a problem with the
filesystem or device rather than a permissions problem. Seeing it
often spoils your day. :-/

So I would carefully check if there are any problems with the device
you're trying to send to: run an fsck; do similar checks; check the
kernel logs; etc.

--
Martin

Thank you very much for the reply. You were absolutely right, the
problem was a lower-level filesystem problem. I had a corrupted
partition somehow. Once i recreated and reformatted the partition,
restored the rdiffs from tape again, it worked like a charm.

-tommy

Martin Pool wrote:
On 17 Aug 2004, "Thomas S. Dixon" <dixont < at > musc.edu> wrote:

Greetings all,
I have 2 questions, but first some background. We've been using
rdiff-backup for about 6 months and it's been fantastic. Unfortunately,
we lost some disks in our storage enclosure (which held the rdiffs) and
had to start from scratch. I have now restored the rdiffs back to the
enclosure from tape. Rdiff-backup lists all the increments fine.
However, now I'm trying to run a subsequent backup to the restored
rdiff-backup location and it errors immediately. I believe that the
pertinent error is this:

OSError: [Errno 5] Input/output error:
'/backup/yellowstone/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-backup.tmp.0'

So I have 2 questions. First, what is the function of this
rdiff-backup.tmp.0 file? I'm guessing it's a temp file used only by
rdiff-backup during a backup. My first thought were permissions, maybe
rdiff-backup couldn't create this file, but I was able to create it
manually. Second question is: What kinds of things might cause this
OSError? I've already looked at permissions and they seem fine.


Hi,

Errno 5 is EIO = "input/output error". (At least it is on Linux, and
many others, and that'd be consistent with this message.) This
usually indicates an actual IO error, i.e. a problem with the
filesystem or device rather than a permissions problem. Seeing it
often spoils your day. :-/

So I would carefully check if there are any problems with the device
you're trying to send to: run an fsck; do similar checks; check the
kernel logs; etc.