I installed BackupPC from the Ubuntu repositories several days ago with
the intent of getting it set up and running as soon as a HDD came in.
Well last night I was reading thru some of the doc and took a look at
the control webpage and much to my surprise saw that a host was there
(localhost) and had done something... but also had an error about it's
name not matching netbios name.  I changed it's name and deleted the
backup files under /var/lib/backuppc/pc/localhost.

After some more reading I change 5 things from the default install:

1) changed default method to rsync
2) changed logs kept from 14 to 9
3) changed the host name "localhost" to "c17-desktop"
4) checked the box override box called "FixedIPNetBiosNameCheck"
5) changed blackout period to be 7.5 thru 18.5

Then requested a full backup on c17.

It returned a new error on the host summary page:
c17-desktop skip 0 0.00 0   idle backup failed (Unable to read 4 bytes)

This is the machine that BackupPC was installed on.  I guess getting
that machine backed up is as good as anyplace to start.

I also, via the web interface attempted to exclude some directories and
file types which ended up creating /etc/backuppc/c17-desktop.pl that
contains:

$Conf{FixedIPNetBiosNameCheck} = '0';
$Conf{BackupFilesExclude} = {
  '*.old' => [],
  '/var/lib/backuppc' => [],
  '/tmp' => [],
  '/lost+found' => [],
  '/proc' => [],
  '/cdrom' => [],
  '/mnt' => []
};

After saving these change I attempted another full backup and got the
same error: backup failed (Unable to read 4 bytes)

So, questions:

1) Is it advisable/legit to use rsync on the local machine backing up
itself?

2) Do my directory and file exclusions make any sense for backing up the
machine that BackupPC is on?

3) How can I find out more about this error I'm getting?

PS:  HDD just arrived so I'll get the RAID 1 set up tonight or tomorrow
and figure out how to point BackupPC to that.... think I read there's a
topDIR variable someplace.



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