Re: [rdiff-backup-users] 1.2.6: warning about broken support for extended attributes

[Andrew Ferguson]

On Jan 28, 2009, at 2:28 PM, Andreas Olsson wrote:
> When I run rdiff-backup on my Ubuntu 8.04 (hardy) I receive the this  
> warning:
>
> ----------------------------------------
> address@hidden:~$ rdiff-backup a/ b/
> Warning: Your version of pyxattr (unknown) has broken support for  
> extended
> attributes on symlinks. If you choose not to upgrade to a more  
> recent version,
> you may see many warning messages from listattr().
>
> Warning: Your version of pyxattr (unknown) has broken support for  
> extended
> attributes on symlinks. If you choose not to upgrade to a more  
> recent version,
> you may see many warning messages from listattr().
>
> address@hidden:~$
> ----------------------------------------
>
> Seems quite strange considering Hardy provides an updated 0.2.2 of  
> pyxattr. If
> I'm not mistaken completely that's a version where the support for  
> extended
> attributes on symlinks is fixed
>
> http://git.k1024.org/pyxattr.git/?a=blob_plain;f=NEWS;hb=HEAD
>
> Of course, the warning refers to an "unknown" version, so perhaps I  
> guess the
> problem might be related to the detection of pyxattr version.
>
> Also, it seems like a quite load warning, especially when ran on  
> source which
> doesn't even contains any symlinks.
>
> This warning is not present in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid). That versions  
> of Ubuntu
> includes pyxattr 0.4.0.


Andreas,

What's wrong with this warning? If Ubuntu is providing a version of  
pyxattr without the __version__ symbol, then there's nothing rdiff- 
backup can do to confirm whether or not correct support is present.  
You're right that 0.2.2 fixed the support.

It's just an informative message ... probably better to be told it  
than to be surprised by things. The message is presented to the user  
long before rdiff-backup can figure out whether there are any xattrs  
or symlinks on the volume. (It is preparing you for any further  
warnings that *might* occur.)

As you noted, the latest version of pyxattr is 0.4.


Andrew