[rdiff-backup-users] Truncated header string

[Sheldon Hearn]

Hi folks,

I'm very excited about rdiff-backup's value offering.  It's a step
forward from Grenville Armitage approach of using rsync and cpio.  I'd
like to take it further eventually, by adding permissions metadata so
that it can run as an unpriveleged user, and support NTFS ownership
information.

Unfortuntely, I can't even get it to restore from remote backup yet.

I created my backup as follows:

rdiff-backup ~/backup-test address@hidden::backup-test
# Make some changes to ~/backup-test on the local host
rdiff-backup ~/backup-test address@hidden::backup-test
# Repeat, and be amazed at the elegance of rdiff-backup-data on
# the remote host.

Then I waited 20 minutes and tried to restore as follows:

rdiff-backup --restore-as-of 10m \
    address@hidden::backup-test \
    /home/sheldonh/restore-test

And lo, I got this error:

Truncated header string (problem probably originated remotely)

The trace is attached.

The two hosts are connected on mostly idle 100BaseTX ethernet, and I
don't get connection drops between them.

Does anyone have any ideas?  I'm using rdiff-backup-0.13.4 on Gentoo
Linux (2.6.10) with glibc-2.3.4.20040808.  I've checked the FAQ and
searched the mailing list archive.  This question has been asked before,
but I couldn't find any appropriate answers.  For some people, they
really did have a flakey network situation.  But I don't,

Thanks,
Sheldon.

Warning: ownership cannot be changed on filesystem at 
/home/sheldonh/restore-test
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/rdiff-backup", line 23, in ?
    rdiff_backup.Main.Main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 259, in 
Main
    take_action(rps)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 239, in 
take_action
    elif action == "restore-as-of": Restore(rps[0], rps[1], 1)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 465, in 
Restore
    inc_rpath, dest_rp, time)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/restore.py", line 45, in 
Restore
    TargetS.patch(target, diff_iter)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/restore.py", line 309, in 
patch
    ITR(diff.index, diff)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rorpiter.py", line 279, 
in __call__
    last_branch.fast_process(*args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/restore.py", line 625, in 
fast_process
    self.patch_to_temp(rp, diff_rorp, tf)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/restore.py", line 633, in 
patch_to_temp
    rpath.copy(diff_rorp, new)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 96, in 
copy
    if rpin.isreg(): copy_reg_file(rpin, rpout, compress)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 118, in 
copy_reg_file
    rpout.write_from_fileobj(rpin.open("rb"), compress = compress)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 947, in 
write_from_fileobj
    copyfileobj(fp, outfp)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 58, in 
copyfileobj
    inbuf = inputfp.read(blocksize)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 1155, in 
read
    def read(self, length = -1): return self.file.read(length)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/iterfile.py", line 117, 
in read
    if not self.addtobuffer(): break
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/iterfile.py", line 132, 
in addtobuffer
    type, data = self.iwf._get()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/iterfile.py", line 401, 
in _get
    if not self.buf: self.buf += self.file.read()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", line 513, 
in read
    return self.connection.VirtualFile.readfromid(self.id, length)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", line 445, 
in __call__
    return apply(self.connection.reval, (self.name,) + args)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", line 367, 
in reval
    if isinstance(result, Exception): raise result
AssertionError: (('diskimages',), ('diskimages', 'dell', 'ED5049A0.tar.gz'))
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/rdiff-backup", line 23, in ?
    rdiff_backup.Main.Main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 259, in 
Main
    take_action(rps)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 227, in 
take_action
    connection.PipeConnection(sys.stdin, sys.stdout).Server()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", line 352, 
in Server
    self.get_response(-1)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", line 314, 
in get_response
    try: req_num, object = self._get()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", line 230, 
in _get
    raise ConnectionReadError("Truncated header string (problem "
rdiff_backup.connection.ConnectionReadError: Truncated header string (problem 
probably originated remotely)