Re: [rdiff-backup-users] Intermittent connection failures

[Maarten Bezemer]

Hi,

Another way to find out what's going on, could be to add -v to the ssh 
command (remote schema).
Right now, all we know is that it fails, but it would be good to know 
whether the problem is with rdiff-backup or simply just what the 
subject-line says: a connection failure.

Side note: please remove the --force argument from the command line. It 
has a habit of breaking things. Use it with caution.

You mention having tried with rsync. Did you do an rsync to a local copy, 
or to the rdiff-backup tree? With the rdiff-backup (not up-to-date) tree, 
rsync would only update some files, and possibly not suffer from randomly 
occurring network outages.
When you subsequently use rdiff-backup to turn the tree into a 
rdiff-backup managed backup tree, rdiff-backup has to process each and 
every file (to create rdiff-backup-data/ metadata files) which can take a 
much longer time, with an increased risk of breaking half-way it the 
network is unstable.


My money would be on the network stability.
Maybe rdiff-backup could somehow be made more robust, but I doubt the 
current design can be patched to support reconnection attempts when 
disconnected unexpectedly.


--
Maarten



On Mon, 4 Jul 2011, Patrick Nagel wrote:

> Hi Jussi,
>
> You can increase the verbosity with the -v<value> parameter, maybe this gives 
> you some more insight into what's going on. Are there any patterns? Is it always the 
> same backup script where these failures occur?
>
> Patrick.
>
> Jussi Hirvi <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > I have something like a terabyte of stuff to backup. I do it each day
> > with more than ten rdiff-backup scripts (one for each directory).
> >
> > Lately I have been getting these errors:
> >
> > > Received disconnect from nn.nn.nn.nn: 2: Timeout, your session not
> > responding.
> > > Fatal Error: Lost connection to the remote system
> >
> > (nn.nn.nn.nn stands for source ip).
> >
> > the script is of this type:
> >
> > rdiff-backup --exclude-special-files --force --remote-schema  "ssh -i
> > /root/.ssh/myserver.dsa %s rdiff-backup --server"
> > address@hidden::/path/to/dir /path/to/dir  1>> logfile 2>> logfile
> >
> > I have tried different things, like
> > - simply rerun the script
> > - throw away rdiff-backup-data directory, then try again
> > - like before, then use rsync, then rdiff-backup again
> > - add ServerAliveInterval 180 to /etc/ssh/ssh_config on target
> >   and ClientAliveInterval 180 to sshd_config on source machine
> > - add ConnectTimeout 300 to ssh_config on target machine
> >
> > Adjusting ssh_config seems to have no effect. These errors seem to
> > center on some dirs and not on others. But the errors don't occur every
> >
> > time, which makes it hard to find the reason.
> >
> > Finally, here is some version information (same versions on source and
> > target):
> > - CentOS 5.6 (source 64-bit, target 32-bit)
> > - rdiff-backup 1.2.8
> >
> > I could check versions of dependencies, if necessary. There may be
> > version differences because one system is 32- and the other 64-bit.
> >
> > One theory is that the router for my target machine (my modem is in
> > bridge mode, so the router is owned by cable operator) plays nasty.
> > They
> > changed all ip's recently, and I think these errors started to appear
> > around the same time. Probably the whole machine has been changed, the
> > routing capabilities for my LAN changed (no more Bonjour printer
> > sharing, etc.).
> >
> > Any thoughts about the reason and remedy of the rdiff-backup errors?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Jussi
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > rdiff-backup-users mailing list at address@hidden
> > https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/rdiff-backup-users
> > Wiki URL:
> > http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/index.php/RdiffBackupWiki
>
> --
> Sent from my phone.
>
> _______________________________________________
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