[Box Backup] Restore fails on symbolic link to itself

[Chris Wilson]

Hi David,

On Fri, 12 Sep 2008, David H Kaufman wrote:

> If I removed the restored symlink, and resumed my restore, I got the 
> same error. If I deleted the symlink and touched the file, I got 
> "Exception: BackupStore OutputFileAlreadyExists (4/8)". I shouldn't 
> expect that to work, but I was trying to find a workaround so I could 
> restore the rest of my data!
> 
> Eventually, I deleted the link-loop in the source filesystem, and forced
> boxbackup to sync. Then I could resume my restore, which ran to completion
> and passed my other tests.

Thanks for the detailed bug report! I think this may be fixed already in 
0.11rc2. but I'll write a test and check that it actually is.

> Some notes, beside the actual symbolic-link-loop problem itself:
> 1. Printing the actual Unix error message would have shortened the
> debugging cycle

This should be fixed already in 0.11rc2.

> 2. If I didn't have the source filesystem handy, I don't know how I would
> have fixed the problem

Mark the file as deleted on the store using bbackupquery, or ask us for 
help.

> 3. A restore "skip-the-first-file" switch would have helped. Alternately,
> restore "don't abort on errors". Or, if I could know what file was being
> restored, some ability to remove it from the backup (this sounds the most
> error-prone and may be a terrible idea).

You can also restore subdirectories so you could manually piece together 
your filesystem, skipping the broken directory. Boxi will also allow you
to exclude files from restoration.

Cheers, Chris.
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