Juergen Harms wrote:

> I fought these messages yesterday. In my case the reason is that  
> topDir
> - the directory where the backup data is stored - is a separate
> file-system, and that BackupPC has problems dealing with that  
> situation.

Having topDir on a separate filesystem is actually recommended for  
performance (you can mount it noatime for instance). BackupPC had no  
problems whatsoever with this situation in my case.

> Googling provided 2 alternative solutions (there appears to be quite  
> an
> epidemy of people suffering from this problem):
>
> 1. Make /var/lib/backuppc an empty directory (if currently you have  
> data
> there, start by saving it elsewhere), and than mount your topDir
> file-system at /var/lib/backuppc (also documented in
> http://www.cs.umd.edu/~cdunne/projs/backuppc_guide.html).
>
> 2. Use the --bind option of mount (the Google reference suggests -o
> bind, I guess another and probably obsolete flavour of --bind, not
> documented on my Mandriva platform). I start by mounting my file  
> system
> for backup data quite traditionally at the mount point "/backup", but
> after that I add an additional mount instruction:
>
> mount --bind /backup /var/lib/backuppc
>
> That acts like a hard link between /backup and /var/lib/backuppc - you
> see the same data through either mount point (and, evidently, you must
> again start by saving any data at /var/lib/backuppc) - and BackupPC
> appears to be happy, no more error messages.
>
> You will probably want to avoid the explicit mount --bind ...
> instruction: this is done by adding to your /etc/fstab - I placed it
> directly after the "mount /dev/xxx /backup ..." instruction - the
> following line:
>
> /backup /var/lib/backuppc none rw,bind 0 0
>
> with the result that the 2 mount points get mounted at boot time. I  
> also
> changed owner and group of /backup to the backup user - but there I am
> less sure how correct or imperative that is.
>
> I read that a new release (3.1.1) of backuppc is being prepared -  
> short
> of fixing this problem, it might be a good idea to add a couple of  
> words
> to the documentation, warning about this restriction in the
> configurability of the topDir variable.

What solution are you proposing exactly? AFAIK BackupPC doesn't care  
if topDir is on another filesystem or not and how it is mounted. Just  
make sure the filesystem it's on supports hardlinks and that your  
backuppc user can access topDir and it should just work. It did for me.

Nils Breunese.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________
BackupPC-users mailing list
BackupPC-users AT lists.sourceforge DOT net
List:    https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users
Wiki:    http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net
Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/