FAQs

From RdiffBackupWiki

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

[edit]

Why does my (first?) backup run so slow, after upgrading from v0.10.1 to v0.13.3?

A: Firstly, file metadata must be read by traversing the file system. On later runs it will be read from the metadata file (which only versions 0.11.1 or later build). Secondly, the development versions are often slower. Before 0.13.x becomes 0.14.0 it will be profiled and optimized.

[edit]

Status of Rdiff-backup on windows

You can get some packages here:

http://solutionsfirst.com.au/~dave/backup/ however I recommend you read this blog entry: 

http://katastrophos.net/andre/blog/?p=19

for details on some of the problems and a patch to 'fix' win32 -> win32 backups. However, this patch is no longer necessary for rdiff-backup versions 1.1.8 and above. Also, version 1.1.12 has some important fixes to make rdiff-backup "just work" on Cygwin.

[edit]

When I backup, I get a lot of ListError's. Why? Is my backup OK?

  ListError {local_file} [[Errno 1]] Operation not permitted: {file_on_remote_mount}

There is some mismatch of file permissions between the user running the rdiff-backup and the user that owns the file being backed up.

My backup did not complete successully when I got this error. I was running rdiff-backup on one machine, that had mounted another machines NFS share. The user name/user_id matchups in /etc/passwd did not match up on the two machines. Running the script as root worked fine.

[edit]

Files that change while being backed up cause errors. How serious are they? Do I just not get the recent changes?

Yes, changing files will probably cause Update Errors, which means you won't get the changes for that day. See the official error policy at: http://rdiff-backup.stanford.edu/error_policy.html

[edit]

How do I run rdiff-backup with python 2.3 (or 2.2)? The rpm I have requires python 2.2 (or 2.3)

Use a source RPM. When you compile the source rpm, the resulting binary RPM will require whatever version of python you used to compile it. So if you have python 2.3 installed and make a rdiff-backup binary RPM, the RPM will require python 2.3. So just use 

 rpmbuild --rebuild rdiff-backup-x.x.x-x.src.rpm

=== I get "UpdateError filename File changed from regular file before signature" every time I back up on files that have long since ceased to exist. This also happens on a file I tried to manually remove from the backup. ===

See FileChanged in the ErrorsAndSolutions section.

[edit]

I have a backup server with lots of space that does NOT have rdiff-backup installed. I also have lots of local space. Will permissions etc. be preserved if I do something like .. 

  rdiff-backup --exclude /BACKUP / /BACKUP
  rsync --archive --delete /BACKUP user@backup-server:/home/user/

Yes, rdiff-backup saves metadata in extra files so this should work. Although it would probably be easier to use something like SHFS (http://shfs.sourceforge.net) to access the remote storage, if it is not available via NFS anyway.

[edit]

Not making remote connections?

When I try to run 

  # rdiff-backup /var/www/html michael@bla.domain.tld:1202:~/backup

I get an error "Unable to create directory michael@bla.domain.tld:1202:~/backup"

Here is some other output from testing: 

  # rdiff-backup --test-server michael@bla.domain.tld:1202:~/backup
  No remote connections specified

  #rdiff-backup --test-server michael@12.123.123.123:1202:/
  No remote connections specified

I installed rdiff-backup on Fedora Core 5 using 

  # yum -y install rdiff-backup

I can backup to a directory on the same machine just fine, but when I try to specifiy a remote machine, it still thinks I mean a local directory named michael@... I have searched and searched for a solution, but cannot find anyone else having this problem. Any suggestions?

Thanks, Michael.

Dear Michael, command syntax is: 

rdiff-backup [[options]] [[[[user@]]host1.foo]::source_directory]

Notice the two consecutive ::

You cannot specify TCP ports the way you have done.

Retrieved from "http://wiki.rdiff-backup.org/wiki/index.php/FAQs"
Personal tools