Apologies if I'm hijacking this thread, but there's two things I don't understand...
Firstly, what is the difference between running nightly manually vs it being run by the daemon? It performs the same tasks either way, no? So, shouldn't the inverse be true as well? In other words, if it's not safe to run nightly manually, wouldn't it also be unsafe being run by the daemon? What makes it safe for the daemon to run it? Secondly, if it's always been a terrible idea to do so, how did the idea get started to run it manually in the first place, and why is it so pervasive? Thanks, --Mark -----Original Message----- From: backuppc-users-boun...@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:backuppc-users-boun...@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Holger Parplies Sent: Tuesday, June 02, 2015 1:31 PM To: Random; kmwatt...@proobject.com Subject: Re: [BackupPC-users] BackupPC Archive Failing Hi, Random wrote on 2015-06-02 05:13:36 -0700 [[BackupPC-users] BackupPC Archive Failing]: > [...] The previous issue turned out to be the main filesystem filling up. I thought I was joking when I suggested that ... > [...] The cpool is filling up and the nightly clean hasn't been > clearing up any space.. for the last couple of weeks at least. How do > I get the nightly process to start cleaning the cpool again? Well, reduce the amount of data stored in your backups (meaning all of them, not just the new ones; how to do that is a completely different topic). Due to BackupPC's pooling mechanism and typical data usage patterns, removing old backups (e.g. by automatic expiration done by BackupPC) tends to free far less space than you might expect. New backups only take as much space as you have new content not already found in the pool (i.e. copying or renaming a file won't take any new space, changing one byte of an existing file will create a new copy in the pool, if you don't happen to have an identical file somewhere else already). Conversely, deleting old backups only gives you back space for content you no longer have *anywhere*. After deleting a file (or changing one), you will have to wait until *all backups* that include the old version of the file have expired before you get anything [much] back. There is a *slight* amount of metadata per backup, but even that is pooled, so you won't get anything back e.g. for attrib files of unchanged directories. As I've written before, if you *think* you need BackupPC_nightly to run (or do a better job), you really either need more disk space, or need to rethink what data you want to keep backups of. > I've ran it manually a few times and there's been no difference. That is one of my favorite topics. NEVER RUN BackupPC_nightly MANUALLY! NEVER! There are better ways to void your warranty. One of these days, I'll write a patch that makes BackupPC_nightly refuse to run if not invoked by the daemon. Why does everyone assume that if something doesn't happen as they imagine, the software must be faulty, and that by doing something arbitrary *with this supposedly faulty software*, they will fix things? Because that is the way Windoze "works"? BackupPC is not powered by millions of dollars worth of paid developer time. It's free. It's open source. It doesn't need the incentive of tons of bugs to get people to spend money on ever the newest versions of new bugs. It just works, it's stable, and it's versatile. It's not as if you couldn't still run a 2.x version and get perfectly usable backups. There are bugs left (e.g. you can run BackupPC_nightly manually), but *most of the time* misbehaviour turns out to be due to usage errors, configuration errors, or hardware errors. Or misunderstanding the concepts. Just to prove my point, you went to the trouble of running it *a few times*!? What is that supposed to achieve? Do you want BackupPC to free a certain amount of space each time? If I bug it long enough, it will delete something, regardless of what data is still "needed" and what data isn't? > |This was sent by kmwatt...@proobject.com via Backup Central. [...] Regards, Holger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: http://backuppc.wiki.sourceforge.net Project: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
