Thread: Re: [BackupPC-users] set-up question: how do I avoid "Cannot open: Permission denied" and "0 bytes"

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--- On Fri, 8/20/10, Loren Serfass <lor...@gm...> wrote:

From: Loren Serfass <lor...@gm...>
Subject: [BackupPC-users] set-up question: how do I avoid "Cannot open: Permission denied" and "0 bytes"? Please help!
To: bac...@li...
Date: Friday, August 20, 2010, 9:50 PM

Hello,
     I am a new user of this software and new to this list.  Apologies for the long email, but I want to make it clear exactly where I am in order to avoid wasting your time with back-and-forth.  Please be patient and help me, because I have spent hours and hours following the provided instructions, reading user forums, and experimenting.  Posting this is my very last resort.  If you find a glaring gap in my knowledge or something obvious that I did wrong, I would be overjoyed.

     For background: I am working with BackupPC version 3.1.0-4, installed by synaptic onto Debian lenny (I'd rather not install from the more recent source).  I am trying to back up my internal hard drive onto an external hard drive which is mounted at /var/lib/backuppc.

     I have read the documentation, the ssh setup instructions, and the localhost instructions from the following websites.
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/BackupPC.html

http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/ssh.html
http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/faq/localhost.html

My progress so far:

---BackupPC starts properly when run from the root account and I can log onto the interface in a web browser.  (I get "start-stop-daemon: command not found" when I run it as the backuppc user.)

---After following instructions, the ssh seems to be set up properly, since running "ssh -l root localhost whoami" as the backuppc user prints just "root." (This is the test given in the ssh instructions).

---I have enabled the backuppc user to use sudo with the commands /bin/tar and /usr/bin/rsync.  I'm pretty sure these are working correctly because when I am logged into a terminal as backuppc I can still tar a file that has -rw------- permissions and root ownership.

---I have tried both tar and rsync as the XferMethod.  I have changed the TarClientCmd and RsyncClientCmd to use sudo.  I tried to do it as described on the localhost FAQ (though this is one of the more difficult parts for me).

---There are cpool, log, pc, pool, and trash directories in /var/lib/backuppc.  Each has permissions drwxr-x---   Each is owned by backuppc and has group backuppc.

---I have excluded /var/lib/backuppc from the backups, and made a few other minor changes.

HOWEVER:

When I request a full backup of localhost, I STILL get "Cannot open: Permission denied" errors in the log file.  The problem files all have -rw------- permissions, so it seems that tar isn't working properly when run through the program although it works fine on that type of file when run by the backuppc user in isolation.  I have been mostly starting backuppc when logged in as root, by the way.  That seems counterintuitive to me, but when I start it when logged on the backuppc user, I get "start-stop-daemon: command not found".

Most frustrating, the log file always ends with "...full backup X complete, 2891 files, 0 bytes, 37 xferErrs (0 bad files, 0 bad shares, 37 other)".  The "0 bytes" part seems to mean that it didn't back up ANY data.  And it only takes a few seconds, so I know that it's not backing up.  I get these same problems after many backups and also after reinstalling/reconfiguring, so it's very consistent.

Perplexingly, it seems to be trying to back up only the /etc directory.  Why isn't it doing the whole / directory?  That's what I tried to set up.  I just want to back up my whole hard drive onto an external drive.

Are these problems easy to solve, or should I switch away from backuppc?  If so, could you recommend something easy?

Thank you for your time.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Loren;

Before delving to far and sorry a back-forth question... What type of external HDD do you have? If it is USB, what file system is it formatted with?

  Allen...

Thread: Re: [BackupPC-users] set-up question: how do I avoid "Cannot open: Permission denied" and "0 bytes"

backuppc-users