Hi,

Steve Blackwell wrote on 2009-08-13 00:26:20 -0400 [Re: [BackupPC-users] 
100,000+ errors in last nights backup]:
> I started to reply to your e-mail but my system crashed. The messages
> log suggests that backuppc may have been the culprit. See below.

hmm. See below.

> On Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:19:25 +0200 Holger Parplies <wbppc AT parplies DOT de>
> wrote:
> 
> > [...] I can't imagine why
> > two backups of the same host would be scheduled simultaneously, and I
> > don't think it's a good idea to do so :-). BackupPC doesn't usually
> > do this. Have you changed the code in any way? Have you seen such a
> > thing happen before?
> 
> Could I have started the backuppc service twice somehow?

I don't think so. BackupPC opens a UNIX domain socket on startup (and failing
to do that is a fatal error). This should make a second instance fail to start
up.

> > So, I believe we're back to the issue of what you did wrong when
> > moving $TopDir. I don't remember reading which version of BackupPC
> 
> When moving $TopDir? I haven't moved it. It's always been /media/disk
> ever since I installed backuppc.

Meaning you installed from the SF tarball and set TopDir to /media/disk when
running the configure script?

> > Below /media/disk/cpool? BackupPC_nightly reports files there, but
> 
> # ls -l /media/disk
> total 48
> drwxr-x--- 18 backuppc root  4096 2009-08-12 20:00 cpool
> drwx------  2 root     root 16384 2008-07-16 23:54 lost+found
> drwxr-x---  4 backuppc root  4096 2009-08-09 23:06 pc
> drwxr-x---  2 backuppc root  4096 2008-07-26 18:53 pool
> drwxr-x---  2 backuppc root  4096 2009-08-11 01:25 trash

Shouldn't there be a "log" directory there? Hmm. You might simply have put it
elsewhere (probably under /var/log). But I find it confusing that ...

> So cpool has today's date

... but ...

> ]# ls -l /media/disk/cpool
> [...]
> Nothing since 6/28.

Why is ctime on cpool/ updated when all subdirectories already exist? Hmm,
probably the hardlink test (which does *not* necessarily mean this is the
cpool BackupPC uses - again: which version are you running?).
In any case, pool files would be created three directory levels below.

> This is where I got to when the machine crashed. Looking
> at /var/log/messages I see this:
> 
> [...]
> Aug 12 20:00:12 steve kernel: Pid: 17353, comm: BackupPC_tarExt

Yes, BackupPC_tarExtract was running ... not unusual during a backup. But user
space processes can't cause kernel panics (they can maybe trigger them, but
never *cause* them). I'm no expert on kernel stack traces, so I won't guess
about the cause. If I were you, I'd check the BackupPC pool file system (and
maybe system memory).

> This is repeated for the 2nd CPU. Does this have anything to do with
> that link we created?

No.

> As I said in an earlier e-mail, the disk I backup to is an external 1TB
> USB drive. My computer is old enough that the BIOS locks up when
> booting with this disk connected so I have to unplug it to boot.

"Old enough" as in USB1?

What kernel version are you running? Ah, yes. 2.6.27. I've had more problems
with older kernels and USB2 than I could have wished for, but newer kernels
seem to behave much better. Still, I'd try to avoid USB for such heavy use
as a BackupPC pool tends to be. Is that at all possible? eSATA? Does it *need*
to be an external disk?

> Backuppc fails during the boot process because it can't make the
> required links. 

Ok. That's good.

> After the machine has booted, I plug in the USB drive and it gets
> automatically mounted as disk on the mount point /media.

I take it you mean it is mounted on /media/disk ...

> Then I have to restart the backuppc service.

Can you umount it manually and run an fsck?

Regards,
Holger

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