RE: [BackupPC-users] gtar never ends.

[Phill B. <Phill@WebWombat.com>]

Hi Craig,

Thank for the reply. It is reeeely halpful!!

See below:
 
>Phill,
>
>There are several possibilities.
>
>I recommend you do some manual tests.  If you look in the PC's
>backup directory there should be a file XferLOG.bad.z (or similar
>if compression is off).  This is the stdout from tar when it is
>running.  You can display it with BackupPC_zcat.
>

[backuppc@backup pc]$ cd www
[backuppc@backup www]$ ls -l
total 35449
-rw-r-----    1 backuppc backuppc        0 May 18 22:15 backups
-rw-r-----    1 backuppc backuppc        0 May 16 22:01 backups.old
-rw-r-----    1 backuppc backuppc     1710 May 14 17:18 config.pl
-rw-r-----    1 backuppc backuppc        0 Apr 20 07:54 LOCK
-rw-r-----    1 backuppc backuppc     4456 May 18 22:15 LOG
-rw-r-----    1 backuppc backuppc     3989 Apr 30 19:00 LOG.0
drwxr-x---    3 backuppc backuppc       96 May 18 22:15 new
-rw-r-----    1 backuppc backuppc 25264128 May 19 07:51 NewFileList
-rw-r-----    1 backuppc backuppc 11013273 May 19 07:48 XferLOG
-rw-r-----    1 backuppc backuppc      236 Apr 20 07:54 XferLOG.bad
[backuppc@backup www]$ tail -f XferLOG.bad 
Running: /usr/bin/ssh -q -n -l root www /bin/gtar -c -v -f - -C /
--atime-preserve --totals .
tarExtract: Unexpected end of tar archive (tot = 512, num = , posn = )
tarExtract: Done: 1 errors, 0 filesExist, 0 sizeExist, 0 sizeExistComp

[backuppc@backup www]$ tail -f XferLOG     
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW476253.HTM
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW476326.HTM
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW476609.HTM
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW476879.HTM
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW476880.HTM
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW476882.HTM
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW477775.HTM
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW477804.HTM
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW478837.HTM
./staging/htdocs/wwdir/WW478839.HTM

Now this is interesting because this is the directory that contains 70,000
files. It's also interesting because I asked it not to back this one up
(which I've probably done incorrectly).

[backuppc@backup www]$ vi config.pl




#============================================================= -*-perl-*-
#
# Configuration file for BackupPC.
#
# DESCRIPTION
#
#   This is the main configuration file for BackupPC.
#
#   This file must be valid perl source, so make sure the punctuation,
#   quotes, and other syntax are valid.
#
#   This file is read by BackupPC at startup, when a HUP (-1) signal
#   is sent to BackupPC and also at each wakeup time whenever the
#   modification time of this file changes.
#
#   The configuration parameters are divided into four general groups.
#   The first group (general server configuration) provides general
#   configuration for BackupPC.  The next two groups describe what
#   to backup, when to do it, and how long to keep it.  The fourth
#   group are settings for the CGI http interface.
#
#   Configuration settings can also be specified on a per-PC basis.
#   Simply put the relevant settings in a config.pl file in the
#   PC's backup directory (ie: in __TOPDIR__/pc/hostName).
#   All configuration settings in the second, third and fourth
#   groups can be overridden by the per-PC config.pl file.
#
# AUTHOR
#   Craig Barratt  <cba...@us...>
#
# COPYRIGHT
#   Copyright (C) 2001  Craig Barratt
#
#   See http://backuppc.sourceforge.net.
#
#========================================================================

###########################################################################
# What to backup and when to do it
# (can be overridden in the per-PC config.pl)
###########################################################################
$Conf{SmbClientTimeout} = 144000;
$Conf{BackupFilesExclude} = {
  '/' => ['/staging/htdocs/wwdir','/wombat/v2.1/index']
};





>The first line should show the exact tar command that was run.
>Because of stdout buffering, the last line unfortunately won't
>tell you exactly where it breaks, but might give you a hint
>about roughly which directories it appears to have problems with.
>
>I would recommand running this command manually, and piping the
>output into "tar tvf -".  Does this run to completion?

I'll do this step next.

Regs
Phill

>
>Assuming that works (which I suspect will), next I would restrict
>BackupPC to dump just the directories where it appears to have
>a problem (based on the last parts of XferLOG.bad.z).  Assuming
>that fails, you should look at anything unusual about files in
>those directories (special files, very large files etc).
>
>If the archive does contain >8GB files it is possible
>BackupPC_tarExtract
>gets confused.  I haven't tested files this large.  It's possible that
>it only gets the file size mod 8GB, and then gets completely lost as
>it tries to extact further files.
>
>Craig
>