Re: [BackupPC-users] Guide to set up scheduling in BackupPC

[Les M. <les...@gm...>]

On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 11:58 PM, Prem <squ...@ya...> wrote:
> Hi Les, see below for my comments:
>
>
> On Thursday, September 12, 2013 12:35 AM, Les Mikesell
> <les...@gm...> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 9:39 PM, Prem <squ...@ya...> wrote:
>> Hi Les,
>>
>> I can try that but I really wonder why the scheduling is made so
>> complicated
>> yet it does not work as intended.
>
> The scheme is intended to scale, letting the server control the
> concurrency level since only it knows when other backups finish.  But,
> I've never seen it 'not work' so I don't know what you are missing.
> Are you using the web interface to modify the per-host configurations,
> the global config, or both?  Is the server clock/date correct?  Do
> you have so many targets that backups aren't completing in their
> window?
> Prem: I realized the time was different for some clients and I corrected it
> but somehow even though the wakeuptime is at 6pm, the job starts around 5pm.

What do you mean the 'the wakeuptime?   Wakeuptime should be a list of
times to do the scheduling, not necessarily the backup runs, and the
first time in the list is when backuppc_nightly runs to do
housekeeping and remove expired backups.

> I also have jobs starting at 8am when the blackout was set from 7am to 6pm.
> See below for the notice on the client page:
>
> This PC is used by backuppc.
> Last email sent to backuppc was at 9/2 01:08, subject "BackupPC: no recent
> backups on client-1".
> Last status is state "idle" (idle) as of 9/17 23:00.
> Pings to client-1 have succeeded 15 consecutive times.
> Because client-1 has been on the network at least 0 consecutive times, it
> will not be backed up from 7:00 to 18:00 on Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri.

This still doesn't make any sense to me.  Are you sure the server date
is correct?  Maybe it thinks it is a weekend.

> To save the hassle and also to test the backups, I set the configs on the
> server level and not really on client specifics. I use the web to make the
> changes; is there anything wrong with that?

Nothing wrong, but the per-client configs can override the global
settings so you should at least look at the merged view from the
client configuration page to make sure it isn't different.

> Most of my clients have small data and it completes within few hrs, which
> happen to be within the blackout window. I also set concurrent backups to
> around 7.

Most servers would work better with 4 or fewer concurrent backups -
completing the overall run faster - or perhaps even 2.


>> May I ask your help to share the configuration for schedule for a new
>> client? Perhaps I could start it from scratch for a new client and see how
>> it behaves. I would like to do the following:
>>
>> Daily incremental starts at 6pm.
>
> Immediately after the 'edit host' step where you add the new client,
> go to that node page, 'stop' the backup (even though it is not
> running) and set a number of hours to wait for the next run that will
> make it start at approximately the right time.
>
> Prem: I am going to try this very shortly and share how it went. But my
> worry about this approach is that, I need to manually customize the starting
> hours for every client i set so that it starts at that hour.

This should be a one-time thing to make the first backup start in your
backup window and stay there until the goodcount takes effect.

>Then it defeats
> the purpose of setting the wakeup and blackout...

Your problem is that your blackout is not working, which I don't
understand.  You should be able to set different blackout periods in
the per-pc settings - but the wakeup list is global.   Maybe you
should try putting wakeups back to the default to see if that is what
is breaking your setup.

>> Normally the only thing I change from the defaults related to
>> scheduling is the number of fulls to keep.
>
> Prem; So meaning, I need to calculate the duration based on the number of
> full backups? May I also ask how it does the purging part?

Yes, you set how often the fulls run or leave the default weekly
setting, then set a count of how many of those to retain. When that
number is exceeded, the oldest is deleted from the pc directory, then
a later backuppc_nightly run will remove the pool items whose link
count is down to 1 (not linked in any backup).  The disk space isn't
released until the pool files are removed.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    les...@gm...