[rdiff-backup-users] "Permission denied" when doing local backup

[Joseph Luk]

Hello,

I've installed rdiff-backup on my Linux-based web hosting account.  It  
works fine in server mode (I can send backups to that account from my  
client computer).  However, when I try to do a simple  
directory-to-directory local backup:
        rdiff-backup source dest

I get a weird "permission denied" error that references a directory  
that shouldn't need to be accessed.  Please see error trace below.  My  
account resides in /home/myaccount, but the error message is:  
Permission denied: '/home'.  Of course I don't have permissions in  
/home because I am just a regular user.

> cd ~
> rdiff-backup sourcedir destdir
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/myaccount/rdiff-backup/bin/rdiff-backup", line 23, in ?
    rdiff_backup.Main.Main(sys.argv[1:])
  File  
"/home/myaccount/out/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py",  
line 283, in Main
  File  
"/home/myaccount/out/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py",  
line 216, in final_set_action
  File  
"/home/myaccount/out/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py",  
line 651, in restore_set_root
  File  
"/home/myaccount/out/lib/python2.3/site-packages/rdiff_backup/ 
rpath.py", line 811, in listdir
OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/home'

----

Any help would be most appreciated!  I have already tried things like  
absolute paths, and yes, the directories exist with mode 755 (a+rx  
u+wrx).  Rdiff-backup also fails when trying to act as the client,  
sending the directory to another (known working) server.

Any ideas what this could be???

Thank you very much for this much-needed tool -- looking forward to  
making good use of it!