Re: [rdiff-backup-users] fix for error when trying to clean up a full filesystem

[John Soros]

Hello gavin,

Gavin <address@hidden> wrote on Wednesday 09 December 2009
> Alex Samad wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 03:22:22PM +1000, Gavin wrote:
> >> Mmm maybe or maybe just an admin flaw?
may be...

> >> I'm not an rdiff-backup developer mind just a user.
> >>
> >> I think you might find a few bits of software that crash if they run out
> >> of hard drive space.
> >> There are other alert programs that alarm when drive space is getting
> >> low.
True, except all of this works from cron, when i have a 100G filesystem to 
back up every day, it's very difficult to calculate at what threshhold it 
should send a warning.
 - The real problem is that you can't add space to the storage, and so you 
loose all your backups because you ran out of space: this (in my humble 
oppinion) kind of beats the purpose.

> >>
> >> Sure it would be nice if rdiff-backup could recover and save one when
> >> this happens and it
> >> does happen. There was some discussion on list some time back about
> >> being able to specify
> >> temp space so that rdiff-backup could perform at least a roll back.
Imho there is no need for temp space for cleanup (removing snapshots), but 
that's just my first impression, didn't dive that deep in the code

> >
> > Another option is to have rdiff-backup look for a certain amount of free
> > space (configurable) and fail if its not available
Again, very difficult to know how much space is needed for a new incremental 
step for the filesystem beforehand.

> >
> > Alex
> 
> Yes one could certainly put this in the wrapper script that is calling
> rdiff-backup.
> Not sure how easily rdiff-backup could do this in a cross
> platform/enviroment way.
> 
> Cheers
> Gavin
> 
It is an interesting topic of discussion as i think many users are affected by 
this issue, and it shouldn't be that difficunt to fix, since there shouldn't 
be any need for free space for cleanup.

Thanks for the comments.
John

signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.