I’ve seen other users here have had this problem as well (judging from the archives) but there has never been a solution posted.  I believe that I have found the answer to this problem, somewhat accidentally:

 

In the process of setting up a script that would periodically check the BackupPC log for the ‘BackupPC::Lib->new failed’ error, I needed to do several restarts of the server.  Apache wasn’t starting on its own giving ‘nodename nor servname provided, or not known: mod_unique_id' in the error log.  Simply commenting out this module solved the apache startup problem … and also, apparently, the ‘BackupPC::Lib->new failed’ error as well.  The script I wrote has not once fired a restart procedure since I commented out the module.  Previous behavior was that the error would crop up at least twice a day and persist until I restarted BackupPC.

 

Now, I’m not quite certain what mod_unique_id does but I haven’t been using it in any other apache installation so I haven’t been too worried to do the research.  If anyone would kindly explain any portion of this problem, I’d be much appreciative.  I plan on writing a howto for BackupPC for Debian and Mac OS X and this piece of info would be pretty handy.

 

B

 

 

I’ve recently needed to reinstall BackupPC on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.  While it had worked previously on this platform, I’m getting some very odd errors that driving me insane:

 

I’m able to run backups for a period of time but some point in time during the day I’ll begin to get repeated iterations of the following:

 

/opt/local/BackupPC/bin/BackupPC_dump: Wrong user: my userid is 501, instead of  (tlctoor)

Please su tlctoor first

BackupPC::Lib->new failed

 

After I get this, newly initiated processes will fail but previously active processes seem to continue.  I then need to restart the BackupPC service to get backups back on track.

 

What am I missing, where should I look?

 

Brian