[Box Backup] Possible date bug?

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Timothy,

On Sun, 24 Feb 2008, Timothy Wilson wrote:

> I appreciate you taking the time to ask Ben.

No need, it was a copy of an answer that he provided several months ago 
when I asked him that question about timestamps on directories.

> Out of curiosity, what is the best way to determine how recent a backup 
> is? I mean, even if it's something like just ls -l on the backup 
> directory in the shell, as long as it give me an idea.

Unfortunately it's not so simple. Box Backup doesn't have the idea of a 
snapshot that encompasses all files at a particular date. It would 
conflict with not uploading files which have changed too recently, and 
also with resuming an interrupted backup. There are plans to implement a 
true snapshot behaviour in future, but at the moment, there is no easy way 
to find out when the last backup was run by looking at the server alone, 
only the most recent backup of each individual file. You could recursively 
list all files and pick the most recent file timestamp, but that's a lot 
of work.

> Or is it just better to view the logs, to see what's failing (if
> anything).

I would always advise doing that if you suspect a problem. Box Backup 
client should notify you using the NotifyScript if a backup fails. 
Combine with "bbackupctl sync" to force a backup to occur at scheduled 
times, and therefore a notification if one of these fails.

> The reason I'm concerned is that I use boxbackup with remote sites, and 
> the internet lines here in Australia varies from almost reliable to 
> pathetic, so my current system of rsyncing directories with a cronjob 
> often fails silently.

rsync should not fail silently, it should at least generate an error if 
the backup does not complete. Box Backup definitely should, and if it 
doesn't notify you then I want to know about it.

> I feel 98% confident that every machine I have on box (currently about 
> 6, with more to come) can recover fully from a disaster, so this is a 
> huge improvement from my current system. But that last 2% would be to 
> know exactly when a backup occurred (or didn't).

Are you running regular scheduled compares? If not, then you should not 
have confidence in your backups, whatever the method, but especially not 
with beta software like Box Backup.

Cheers, Chris.
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