Re: [BackupPC-users] Running commands from the command line

[Zach <la...@ro...>]

On 03/20/2013 01:44 PM, Holger Parplies wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Zach La Celle wrote on 2013-03-20 09:53:04 -0400 [[BackupPC-users] Running commands from the command line]:
>> I'm trying to manually run commands like BackupPC_nightly and a custom 
>> BackupPC_deleteFiles.pl script from the command line.  The reason is 
>> that I accidentally backed up a large amount of data that should not be 
>> backed up.
>>
>> When I try to run these commands, I get the error "No language setting" 
>> inside of the BackupPC/Lib.pm perl module.
> you're lucky there, because you *never run BackupPC_nightly from the command
> line*. Instead, let the server run it when appropriate, taking into account
> running instances of BackupPC_link (in particular, not starting new ones while
> BackupPC_nightly is running):
>
> 	% BackupPC_serverMesg BackupPC_nightly run
>
> Remember to run that *as the backuppc user*. Depending on how your system is
> set up, you might have to use something like 'su -s /bin/bash - backuppc'. The
> same is true of any command that uses Lib.pm, but there should be an error
> message to that effect ...
>
> Regards,
> Holger
I've figured out my original problem, and I'm going to document my
solution here so that an unsuspecting user in the future can figure it out.

I'll say first off that you should listen to Holger and NOT run commands
from the command line unless you ACTUALLY know what you're doing.

My issue was that I had a HUGE backup that accidentally happened (a
network share got moved, and all of the data ended up on our backup
machine).  I needed to get rid of the backup, and I couldn't wait the
requisite n days (where n is the length of time we keep backups) for the
data to go away.  It really would be nice if BackupPC let you do this
automatically...

Anyway, my issue was that I was trying to run the binaries from the
directory where I had downloaded the source for BackupPC, NOT the
directory that I had actually installed into!  A great way to recognize
this is if you see macros like __INSTALLDIR__ in your bin files.  These
macros should get replaced with your specific install locations.  This
was causing the Lib->new perl command to fail, causing the error "No
language settings".

After running out of the correct bin directory, everything worked fine. 
I will add that the tool I was using to delete old backups seems to work
well, and is called "BackupPC_DeleteFile."

Hope this helps someone in the future.