Re: [rdiff-backup-users] rdiff-backup completes without errors, but then have a corrupt archive...

[Matthew Flaschen]

Andrew Ferguson wrote:
> The exit codes should be the same, but, truthfully, the state of
> rdiff-backup's exit codes are not very good. I don't think they're
> documented anywhere (someone correct me if I'm wrong). There's even a
> bug open in Ubuntu #128244 which basically amounts to "rdiff-backup has
> unhelpful error codes".
> 
> That said, I would be more than happy to implement useful error codes. I
> just don't know what would be useful to system administrators. :-)
> 
> In that bug,
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/rdiff-backup/+bug/128244 , I
> proposed:
> 0 = no error occurred
> 1 = unrecoverrable error
> 2 = another rdiff-backup instance running
> 3 = recoverrable error (link down, interrupted, etc.)

I would be tempted to say the more the merrier.  Obviously 0 is success.
, non-zero is failure, and basic scripts can take advantage of that.
But sophisticated wrapper scripts will probably be able to appreciate
being able to case (or equivalent) through all the actual reasons for
failure.  There are more than 4 ways for rdiff-backup to fail, so more
than 4 exit codes probably makes sense.  Ideally, they would be arranged
into ranges, so e.g. 10-19 could be unrecoverable errors of various kinds.

Matthew Flaschen