[Box Backup] Feedback and issues with boxbackup-0.10 on OpenSolaris/ZFS

[Lesinigo Luca]

Hello there. Hope this is the right place for this stuff. I'm used to  
run boxbackup-0.10 in linux, but I'm moving it on a solaris box.  
Solaris express community edition, svn_67, on good old 32bit x86.

1) I more or less followed http://bbdev.fluffy.co.uk/trac/wiki/ 
CompilingOnSolaris and it compiled well, but "make install-backup- 
server" did not work. You can read the exact commands I used at  
http://www.semlug.net/moin/OpenSolaris/BoxBackup - sorry for the  
Italian comments, but the commands should be pretty clear. "make  
install-backup-server" gives me [1], repeated once for every binary  
in the server parcel.

2) I manually installed boxbackup server on the system (as you can  
read on the semlug.net wiki) and it seems to be working without  
problems on my SXCE install. It's happily running inside a solaris  
container living on a ZFS filesystem, hope this feedback sounds good  
to you as it does to me :)

2b) zfs with compression=on (uses lzjb, a really light algorithm,  
much faster than gzip) reports a 1.07 compression factor on a 50GB  
boxbackup store. Maybe this means you can squeeze something more off  
the bbackup compression?

3) I kept getting errors like "while housekeeping account 00040001,  
exception Common OSFileError (Error accessing a file. Check  
permissions.) (1/9) -- aborting" [from bbstored] and "Exception:  
RaidFile RaidFileDoesntExist (2/11)" [from bbstoreaccounts info],  
when the real problem was that I put the 'account directories'  
directly under the raidfile directory (like $dir/$accountsdir), while  
bbstored expected $dir/backup/$accountsdir.
Mine was just a stupid error transferring the data from a server to  
another, but the error messages weren't useful at all, they were  
misleading!

4) This is more of a feature request, but having a solaris smf(5)  
manifest for boxbackup would be great. I tried to look into it but it  
proved to be a more challenging task than what I expected, having  
never wrote a manifest. I must say I'm more or less a beginner with  
solaris.

I hope this mail is useful to you. I'll keep my subscription to the  
m.l. for a while so I'll read any reply to this.
If boxbackup-0.10 on solaris proves to be stable as it seems to be,  
I'll convert my production servers (I offer an internet boxbackup  
server service to my customers) to solaris on ZFS.

Meanwhile, thanks for boxbackup and keep up with the good work! :)

[1] partial output of make install-backup-server:
(cd parcels/boxbackup-0.10-backup-server-solaris2.11; ./install- 
backup-server)
find: stat() error /opt/boxbackup/bin: No such file or directory
find: cycle detected for /lib/32/
find: cycle detected for /lib/secure/32/
find: cycle detected for /usr/lib/locale/common/32/
find: cycle detected for /usr/lib/locale/common/LC_CTYPE/32/
find: cycle detected for /usr/lib/locale/common/LO_LTYPE/32/
find: cycle detected for /usr/lib/secure/32/
find: cycle detected for /usr/lib/32/
find: cycle detected for /usr/lib/lwp/32/
find: cycle detected for /usr/lib/link_audit/32/
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/lu_activate_sync: No  
such file or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/lu_init_sync_start: No  
such file or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/lu_init_sync_stop: No  
such file or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/lucreatezone: No such  
file or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/ludevices: No such file  
or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/ludo: No such file or  
directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/lufslist: No such file  
or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/lumount: No such file  
or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/luprintf: No such file  
or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/lurootdev: No such file  
or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/lustatus: No such file  
or directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/lusync: No such file or  
directory
find: cannot follow symbolic link /usr/lib/lu/luumount: No such file  
or directory
[....................]

--
Lesinigo Luca
LM Networks S.r.l.