Re: [BackupPC-users] pool vs. cpool

[Craig B. <cba...@us...>]

Paul Fox writes:

> this went fine, except that unnoticed by me, the compression
> module for perl was not installed as well.  the error which i've
> now spotted, when i run, for instance, "bin/BackupPC_zcat", is:
> 
>     Can't locate Compress/Zlib.pm
> 
> if this message was in one of the backuppc log messages, i can't
> find it, nor did i get mail about it.
> 
> here's the kicker:  presumably because Zlib.pm couldn't be found,
> backuppc reverted to doing uncompressed backups.  as i look back
> through my logs, i see that the cpool size has been constant, and
> the pool size has been growing every day, until finally the
> backup disk filled up.

Yes, it automatically turns compression off if Compress::Zlib
cannot be found.  I think in the future I should turn this into
a fatal error ($Conf{CompressLevel} > 0 with no Compress::Zlib).

> now, i need to do two things:
> 
>     - fix perl.  i just looked at the backuppc installation
> 	instructions expecting to find a list of required perl
> 	modules, but it doesn't jump out at me.  is there such a
> 	list?  i seem to recall that i've had perl configuration
> 	errors before that didn't show up in any log -- i think
> 	this is a serious bug.  (i think perl errors should be
> 	mailed to the administrator.)

Yes, the list is shown under "Step 2: Installing the distribution".

>     - after fixing perl, i need to fix my backup pool.  it took
> 	me a while to notice this problem, since it took a while
> 	for the pool disk to fill.  i have a week's worth of
> 	incrementals, and at least one partial full backup, all
> 	of which reference "pool", rather than "cpool".  how do i
> 	clean this up?  i don't have room to keep the pool
> 	directory around -- the disk was about half full using
> 	just cpool before.  if i just remove the "pool" dir, that
> 	will leave a bunch of dangling backups, right?  how can i
> 	do this cleanly?

Your best choice is to delete the recent (uncompressed) backups.
You can do that by removing the numbered backup directory in
each client directory, and also deleting the corresponding
lines in the backups file (one line per backup - the backup
number is at the start of the line).

After BackupPC_nightly runs the pool directory should be empty.

Craig