[BackupPC-users] Some problems I've had with BackupPC

[<jpu...@ro...>]

I have only recently begun experimenting with BackupPC and I'm quite impressed.  However, I had some difficulty getting it to work initially, so I though I'd share my experience.

My problem was with the default value for $Conf{PingArgs}:

$Conf{PingArgs} = '-c 1 -w 3 $host';

The problem with these argument is that not all version of ping support the -w option.  The version of ping shipped with RedHat comes from the iputils package, which has support for the -w option.  The version of ping shipped with Debian comes from the netkit package, which has no support for the -w option.

The problem wouldn't have been so bad if it were not for the fact that when BackupPC_dump is used with a DHCP host it tries to ping the host and if it can't BackupPC_dump fails silently.

There is logging for almost every failure in the rest of BackupPC_dump, is this an over site?

Omitting the -w option seems to work fine.  One could also install the iputils package for Debian.  Could someone perhaps add a little note in the config file so other Debian users don't run into the same problem?

Many thanks,
James Puderer