Hi,

martin f krafft wrote on 2011-05-30 14:28:23 +0200 [Re: [BackupPC-users] 
BlackoutPeriods seemingly ignored]:
> also sprach martin f krafft <madduck AT madduck DOT net> [2011.05.19.0925 
> +0200]:
> > [...]
> > It seems almost like BackupPC is just ignoring BlackoutPeriods, [...]
> 
> To answer my own question:

sorry that you didn't get a reply.

> It is really such that BlackoutPeriods only work once and as long as
> BlackoutGoodCnt pings succeed in succession.

Correct. (Well, one bad ping won't end it, BlackoutBadPingLimit successive
bad pings will.)

> To get my desired behaviour, I set BlackoutGoodCnt to 0 globally and
> deleted all global BlackoutPeriods.

That's a good thing to keep in mind. Strangely, I can't remember anyone
suggesting that yet, even though it is rather obvious (and documented, as
I see).

Personally, I only back up servers automatically, so I simply set
WakeupSchedule to not interfere with normal operation, much like blackouts
are meant to work (which also turns out to be documented).

> The only disadvantage is that if a host never comes online during
> this period, it won't be backed up, but I can live with that.

With per-host blackouts it seems reasonable to assume that they are meant
as they were specified. For a global blackout it seems reasonable to assume
that it doesn't apply to hosts that are never (or seldom) online outside
the blackout window.

As I understand the concept of blackouts in BackupPC, I think it is meant to
automagically adapt backup strategy to avoid the (global) blackout window
("working hours") for all hosts that can be backed up outside this window.
That would be the "global blackout" case above.

Actually, I would modify your suggestion in that I'd set BlackoutGoodCnt to 0
*locally* in the pc config file, together with a local BlackoutPeriods
setting. In the global config, BlackoutGoodCnt should be != 0. That way, you
would get "expected" behaviour for both cases.

> It wouldn't hurt if BackupPC had some sort of MaxAgeBeforeIgnoringBlackout
> setting to force-ensure some backups.

If you don't have a backup yet, are you supposed to ignore the blackout window
or not? You can't really say, "respect it for three days, then ignore it if
there is still no backup", at least not without defining a concept of when a
host was added to the BackupPC configuration (timestamp of the host.pl file?).
In any case, you have the email reminders that are supposed to alert you to
the fact that there is no recent backup (or no backup at all). If such a case
happens, you will need to consider whether your blackout window needs
adjustment anyway. Automatically degrading from one backup per IncrPeriod to
one backup per MaxAgeBefore... doesn't seem like a sufficient resolution.

Regards,
Holger

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