[rdiff-backup-users] truncated header string during restore

[Ed Greenberg]

The situation is an rdiff-backup session between two servers via SSH.

Backups have been running fine.  I am doing a fire-drill restore to make 
sure w can restore our backups and -- we can't!

I get this:

Tue Apr  4 18:15:19 2017  Exception 'Truncated header string (problem 
probably originated remotely)' raised of class '<class 
'rdiff_backup.connection.ConnectionReadError'>':
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 
304, in error_check_Main
    try: Main(arglist)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 
324, in Main
    take_action(rps)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 
290, in take_action
    elif action == "restore-as-of": Restore(rps[0], rps[1], 1)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 
573, in Restore
    inc_rpath, dest_rp, time)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/restore.py", 
line 37, in Restore
    TargetS.patch(target, diff_iter)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/restore.py", 
line 293, in patch
    ITR(diff.index, diff)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rorpiter.py", 
line 281, in __call__
    last_branch.fast_process(*args)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/restore.py", 
line 609, in fast_process
    self.patch_to_temp(rp, diff_rorp, tf)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/restore.py", 
line 632, in patch_to_temp
    copy_report = rpath.copy(diff_rorp, new)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 
105, in copy
    if rpin.isreg(): return copy_reg_file(rpin, rpout, compress)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 
133, in copy_reg_file
    return rpout.write_from_fileobj(rpin.open("rb"), compress = compress)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 
1195, in write_from_fileobj
    copyfileobj(fp, outfp)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 
62, in copyfileobj
    inbuf = inputfp.read(blocksize)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 
1415, in read
    def read(self, length = -1): return self.file.read(length)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/iterfile.py", 
line 118, in read
    if not self.addtobuffer(): break
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/iterfile.py", 
line 133, in addtobuffer
    type, data = self.iwf._get()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/iterfile.py", 
line 414, in _get
    if not self.buf: self.buf += self.file.read()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", 
line 518, in read
    return self.connection.VirtualFile.readfromid(self.id, length)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", 
line 450, in __call__
    return apply(self.connection.reval, (self.name,) + args)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", 
line 368, in reval
    result = self.get_response(req_num)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", 
line 315, in get_response
    try: req_num, object = self._get()
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/rdiff_backup/connection.py", 
line 233, in _get
    raise ConnectionReadError("Truncated header string (problem "


In fact, the file being restored is always the last fine in a particular 
directory.  The filename is
W9.pdf.59-0-0-0-4_12_2016-0-105258430129
I checked the filename with cat -vet and there are no special 
characters  hidden in the filename.
The file is 509312 characters.

I did not run out of disk space.

There is a partial file rdiff-backup.tmp.9267 which is matches the 
beginning of the file in question, so it seems to have "Truncated" 
midway through the file.

I tried restoring just that file, and it succeeded.

The file was backed up on first run of rdiff-backup and has not changed, 
so there should be no increments related to this file.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Ed G