Amanda-Users

Re: level 0 of huge filesystem not working (tar returned 2, and the backup fails)

2003-03-13 07:04:23
Subject: Re: level 0 of huge filesystem not working (tar returned 2, and the backup fails)
From: Paul Bijnens <paul.bijnens AT xplanation DOT com>
To: wab <wab AT purdue DOT edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 11:03:33 +0100
wab wrote:
One filesystem I'm trying to back up with AMANDA is really huge and I'm
encountering errors:

This filesystem is so huge, a level 0 is taking longer than 24 hours.
Any ideas on what could be going wrong? My best guesses:

1. The filesystem is just too big for TAR.

No, at the end of the tar output, you see its summary line:

> | Total bytes written: 30747043840

All fine here.

2. The filesystem is so big, its contents are changing during the tar
process and confusing it or amanda.

But there are some IO errors:

? gtar: Read error at byte 53808128, reading 10240 bytes, in file
./archive/www/access.0203.gz: I/O error

These trigger the "error code 2" message at the end.
It means that this file is probably corrupted on tape.
But the rest of the archive is still useable.

? gtar: Cannot add file
./opt/freeware/apache/share/htdocs/Library/easmenu.lbi.LCK: No such file
or directory
> [...etc...]

These message are the result of tarring an active filesystem.
It's up to you to decide for each file if it is important or not.
e.g. a missing lockfile or other temporary file is harmless, a growing logfile is harmless, a growing mailbox (with simple sequential access) is also harmless, but a changing Berkeley DB file is probably more dangerous.

--
Paul Bijnens, Xplanation                            Tel  +32 16 397.511
Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM    Fax  +32 16 397.512
http://www.xplanation.com/          email:  Paul.Bijnens AT xplanation DOT com
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