Re: [rdiff-backup-users] New to Rdiff - need help with some error messages

[Andrew K. Bressen]

"Chris Young" <address@hidden> writes:
> Are the UpdateError messages where file does not match source likely
> just from files that were changing during the backup? 

yes.

> Also what is the SpecialFileError that mentions path too long?

This error occurs sometimes with socket files. 
Since it's a socket file created in /var/run by running a cgi, 
I'm pretty sure you don't really need to worry about it.

On my systems, such errors recur once per socket file, 
so I get them after a reboot or if the app has been
stopped and started for some other reason. 

> I guess I don't want to worry about log files but I do want to back them
> up.

In general I've found that I do not get the same logfile updateerrors
every day, indicating that sooner or later each file is done; I consider
the possibility of losing one or two days worth of a log file to be 
an acceptable risk for the envinronment I use rdiff-backup in; you may not. 

Various workarounds are possible, such as copying the logfiles.
If you make a copy of the open logfile before the backup starts, 
then while the logfile may not be backed up because it is changing,
the copy will not be changing and will get backed up. 

> I would like to eventually have critical errors emailed to me so I don't
> have to dig through the error logs. Are there any specific error
> messages I should watch out for?

Since this is the second time I've seen this in a week or two, 
I guess I'll add the following to the wiki...

For my backups, I redirect output of rdiff-backup to a file, 
and then run the file thru the following script and mail 
myself the output. The invocations are:
  /some/path/backup-script2 >/var/logs/backups/backup-`date +%Y-%m-%d` 2>&1
  /some/path/backup-report2 /var/logs/backups/backup-`date +%Y-%m-%d` | \
    mail -s "`hostname` Backup Report `date +%Y-%m-%d`" | \
    address@hidden 
  bzip2 /var/logsbackups/backup-`date +%Y-%m-%d` 


#!/bin/sh
# backup-report2
# a crude backup report munger
# akb 05-jun-2003
#   most recent mods 19-jan-04. 

grep -v "^Executing ssh -C" $1 | \


## rdiff-backup 0.13.x...
grep -v "^  Access control lists.*Off"            | \
grep -v "^  Characters needing quoting.*\'\'"     | \
grep -v "^  Directory inc permissions.*On"        | \
grep -v "^  Extended attributes.*Off"             | \
grep -v "^  Hard linking.*On"                     | \
grep -v "^  Mac OS X Finder information.*Off"     | \
grep -v "^  Mac OS X style resource forks.*Off"   | \
grep -v "^  Ownership changing.*On"               | \
grep -v "^  fsync() directories.*On"              | \
grep -v "^########## \/"                          | \
grep -v 
"^\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-"
  | \
grep -v "^ACLs not supported on filesystem at \/" | \
grep -v "^Detected abilities for destination (read\/write) file system\:" | \
grep -v "^Detected abilities for source (read only) file system\:" | \
grep -v "^Removing directory .*"                  | \
grep -v "^Starting increment operation .* to .*"  | \
grep -v "^Unable to import module posix1e from pylibacl package."    | \
grep -v "^Unable to import module xattr.  EAs not supported on filesystem at 
\/.*" | \
grep -v "^Hard linking .* to .*" | \
## rdiff-backup 0.12.x and 0.13.x
grep -v "^Cleaning up" | \
grep -v "^Incrementing mirror file" | \
grep -v "^Making directory .*" | \
grep -v "^Processing changed file .*" | \
grep -v "^Regular copying" | \
grep -v "^Touching mirror marker" | \