[Box Backup] Another pre-release...

[Ben Summers]

On 8 Mar 2004, at 19:30, Pascal Lalonde wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 02:59:23PM +0000, Ben Summers wrote:
>>
>> Hi
>>
>> Sorry about this, but can I try to persuade you to download and 
>> install
>> a new pre-0.04 version?
>>
>>   http://www.fluffy.co.uk/boxbackup/bin/boxbackup-0.03PLUS3.tgz
> Of course. As long as we can keep our configs, upgrading is quite
> simple, and fast.

Yes, it's just a recompile and install. No config changes at all.

>
>>
>> I noticed that previous versions had problems with unexpected file
>> modification times. This happens when you back up a file server, and
>> the clients don't have synchronized clocks. The current version coped
>> OK with small variations, but not the major ones I found on one
>> particular installation.
>>
>> Anyway, I have rather dramatically modified how it detects changes,
>> which solves this problem. However, I would really like it tested
>> before I release it to the wider world. As a bonus, this new method
>> uses less memory.
> I noticed that something was wrong about files being updated, but I
> wasn't to sure. But before sending something to the list I wanted to be
> sure. Recently I did set up a cron job:
>
> 0 * * * * date > ~/current_time.txt
>
> I suspect that it sometimes takes more than 24 hours to update the 
> file.
> I'm quite busy these days, so I didn't have the time to look into it
> seriously. I'll see with PLUS3.

With the default configuration, it will take between 24 and 25 hours 
for this file to be updated. This is because the file is 'continually' 
updated, so bbackupd holds off backing it up until it settles, which it 
never does, so eventually it uploads it anyway. Adjust MaxUploadWait to 
change this.

If you did

0 0,12 * * * date > ~/current_time.txt

it will be updated about 07:00 and 19:00.


>
> Moreover, bbackupquery crashes very often when I try to 'get' a file,
> something like 1 out of 3 times.

Obviously, it shouldn't do that!

>
> What is the info would you need to be able to find the source of this
> problem? I was thinking of building the debug version of bbackupquery
> and send the core file, and my bbackupd.conf file.

That would be very helpful.

> Should I enable extended logging on the server side and see if it tells
> relevant information?

And on the client side! To enable this with bbackupquery, do

/usr/local/bin/bbackupquery -l filename.log

and it will dump log info to filename.log.

>
> To build the debug version of bbackupquery, do I just need to go in
> bin/bbackupquery and do "make"? Will it rebuild the stuff under
> lib/common too? Or should I do a make clean before?

The release and debug versions are built into separate directories, do 
you don't have to make clean or anything. But to get a debug version, 
you need to build things a little more manually:

cd boxbackup-0.03PLUS2
cd bin/bbackupquery
make

Then use the executable in boxbackup-0.03PLUS2/debug/bin/bbackupquery

>
> Of course, I'll try the new version before anything else, in case it
> fixes the problem.

Thanks.

Ben