Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Error When Backing up to samba share on ubuntu 8.10 via smbfs on Mac OS X

[Andrew Ferguson]

On Mar 20, 2009, at 6:44 PM, Nathan Aschbacher wrote:

I've tried several versions of rdiff-backup (up through 1.3.3) and several versions of Python (up through 2.6.1).  I believe the issues relates to symbolic links based on the error.  It seems to fail when doing its destination capability tests when it fails to delete the temp symlink.  When I go and look at what rdiff-backup creates before dying the file "/Volumes/For_Rent/Desktop/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-backup.tmp.0/symlinked_file2" is a broken symlink to a file "symlinked_file1" that doesn't exist.

Backups over SSH, using sshfs and MacFUSE, and to the local HD all work fine.  So this seems like a strange interaction between rdiff-backup and Samba.

Yes, Samba is pretty bad at consistency (which is an open research area for network file systems). As you can see from the FAQ, getting Samba to work on Linux requires adjusting several options:

http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/FAQ.html#cifs

Since Mac OS X doesn't give you those options (at least that I'm aware of), you'll need to adjust parameters on the server.

This problem also occured when Mac OS X was mounting AFP shares...

http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/rdiff-backup-users/2007-06/msg00036.html

(that thread has some useful debugging tests you can run.)

Finally, let me emphasize what it says in the FAQ: "If possible, the best solution is always to use rdiff-backup over SSH in the default configuration. Using rdiff-backup in the default configuration is also guaranteed to be faster because there is lower network utilization. Rdiff-backup uses the rsync algorithm to minimize the amount of bandwidth consumed. By using smbfs or CIFS, the complete file is transferred over the network."

Andrew