Re: [BackupPC-users] Too many links : where is the problem ?

friedmann wrote at about 09:19:51 -0700 on Monday, August 8, 2011:
 > Hi there,
 > 
 > One of the computers that i backup fails to dump, after a while.
 > After investigations, i found out the error "too many links" on a certain 
 > file. This is highly probable that the number of identical files, in that 
 > case, exceeds 31999.
 > 
 > I read few things about this issue over the internet, and saw several 
 > obscure tricks, and i wondered why i could not increase the number of 
 > hardlinks ${HardLinkMax} ?

Increasing HardLinkMax does not solve your problem since first of all
the limit is there due to the fact that the number of hard links at
least on some filesystems is limited. I'm not an ext3 expert, but a
little googling shows that ext3_fs.h defines:
           #define EXT3_LINK_MAX           32000
So since you claim to be using ext3, you definitely don't want to
increase HardLinkMax beyond 31999.

Second, even if you could increase it, it may just postpone the error.

Rather, too many links should never be a problem visible to the user
since BackupPC automatically creates a new (identical) pool element
whenever HardLinkMax is exceeded on the original pool instance.

So, you need to figure out *why* BackupPC seems not to be working
right for you. That is the root cause you need to figure out.

- Are you sure the number of links on one or more pool files exceeds
  HardLinkMax?
- If so, can you figure out what if anything is special/unique about
  such a file?
- What happens in your logs the first time such a limit is reached?
- Are you sure "too many links" is the error causing dump to fail or
  is BackupPC just notifying the user that the initial pool instance
  has too many links so it is creating a new instance (which is normal
  behavior)?

More generally, more detailed log output would be helpful if you
expect help on this newsgroup...

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