Backup Central

Hi,

I experienced a nasty problem this week with rsnapshot. My root
filesystem appeared to be full. At first I couldn't determine where the
problem came from. Normally I have 5GB of 7GB in use, now the free 2GB
had vanished.
I released much wasted space from /tmp, and could go on, for a short
time. The next day again all space was in use. I released something
more. Next day, same problem. So, I repartitioned and made an extra 4GB
available to /. Next day....
This was weird.
To cut a long story short, it appeared that rsnapshot had managed to
create and use /backup/sync even when my backup disk wasn't mounted. In
rsnapshot.conf I have these two rules enabled:
snapshot_root /backup/sync/
no_create_root 1
and this has worked fine for several months now.

I wonder how this is possible. Could it be that unmounting my backup
disk in the middle of a rsync session causes rsync to create the sync
subdir? I could have done that.
Usually I use my computer only a few hours a day, and the hourly backup
needs some time. What happens if I shutdown the system in the middle of
a backup? Should I check that this is not the case?

Hope this helps someone and someone helps me

Thanks
Marc





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Hi,

On Wed, 17 Aug 2005 06:14:23 -0500, Eric Anderson wrote:
Marc van Munnen wrote:
Hi,

I experienced a nasty problem this week with rsnapshot. My root
filesystem appeared to be full.
[knip]
To cut a long story short, it appeared that rsnapshot had managed to
create and use /backup/sync even when my backup disk wasn't mounted. In
rsnapshot.conf I have these two rules enabled:
snapshot_root /backup/sync/
no_create_root 1
and this has worked fine for several months now.

I wonder how this is possible. Could it be that unmounting my backup
disk in the middle of a rsync session causes rsync to create the sync
subdir? I could have done that.
Usually I use my computer only a few hours a day, and the hourly backup
needs some time. What happens if I shutdown the system in the middle of
a backup? Should I check that this is not the case?

Hope this helps someone and someone helps me

You shouldn't be able to unmount a filesystem that is being used by
rsync, unless you force it (and you'd know it if you did). I have this
same problem, but rsync isn't the issue. rsync doesn't know whether you
mean to backup to the root partition or to another partition. It simply
checks for the existance of /backup and goes for it. I'm going to
write a wrapper script probably that will mount the backup partition rw,
rsync, then remount read-only. That way, if my box crashes or something
goes wrong somewhere, I don't lose my backups. I've thought about
tossing this feature into rsnapshot, but I don't have the time to do it now.

Eric

I still don't know rsnapshot could create /backup/sync, but I'm sure it wasn't me!
To solve this potential problem, I have created an empty *file* called "sync" in /backup, so there exists a file /backup/sync, which practically prevents rsnapshot or whatever to create a directory with the same name.
I tested this with my backup-disk unmounted and with #no_create_root 1.
Rsnapshot gives me an expected error message:
ERROR: Unable to create /backup/sync/,
Please make sure you have the right permissions.

This does the job nicely, I think.

Greetings
Marc


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XS2Mail: Check your mail anywhere http://www.xs2mail.com/


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Hi Marc,

I tested this with my backup-disk unmounted and with
#no_create_root 1. Rsnapshot gives me an expected error message:
ERROR: Unable to create /backup/sync/, Please make sure you have
the right permissions.

This might be a silly question, but does your configuration file have
this entry:

#no_create_root 1

or this entry:

no_create_root 1

If it's the former, the "#" mark is a comment, and rsnapshot will
ignore that line entirely.

Also, is there a directory called /backup/sync/ on your filesystem
when the drive is unmounted? Or is the drive mounted under /backup/
and the removeable drive itself contains a top level directory called
sync/ ?

So far I haven't been able to reproduce anything like this on my end.

Thanks,
- -Nathan


This does the job nicely, I think.

Greetings Marc



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SF.Net email is Sponsored by the Better Software Conference & EXPO
September 19-22, 2005 * San Francisco, CA * Development Lifecycle Practices
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