Michael Ross wrote:
My recent backup failed with a "no space left on device" error
(rdiff-backup 1.2.7 on Linux). It was running as root, so the
partition (which contains nothing but the backup) is completely
full. Therefore, I can't run the suggested "--check-destination-
dir" command because it reports "[Errno 28] No space left on
device: '/mnt/backup/rdiff-backup/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-
backup.tmp.0'".
I've looked through the mailing list, so I know this is a difficult
situation to recover from. Are there any recommendations of how to
successfully run "check-destination-dir" in these circumstances? Is
there anything in the rdiff-backup-data directory that is safe to
delete to make room?
I imagine it's safe to remove the file_statistics* files but have
never tried it.
You could also look for large increment files and delete them on a
case-by-case basis if you decide you don't need them. Obviously in
this case you won't be able to restore the files in question at or
before the date of the increment you delete.
Finally, you could emulate --remove-older-than by removing all files
with the timestamp of your oldest backup.
There are other partitions on the machine that have free space
(though not enough to hold the entire backup).
You could temporarily move old increments to one of those
partitions. Something like:
mv rdiff-backup-data/increments/$dir.2008* /tmp/babies
rdiff-backup --check-destination-dir .
mv /tmp/babies/* rdiff-backup-data/increments/
I've never tried this, either, but I can't imagine why --check-
destination-dir would care. :)
Steven