>> As it turns out, the backup was running out of space for one reason or >> another. Removing the previous backup and manually re-running the backup >> seams to have cured the problem.
Looking at the output from the 'du' command, it looks like you backup drive is very full. It is great that you have already worked this out and have deleted some older backups. Hopefully, the available disk is the full extent of your problems. It is possible to add into your backup configuration a pre-action script so that the backup will not proceed ahead if your destination drive is more than 80% full. However, it could also be more complex and work out approximately how much additional data is required for the backup before proceeding. If you are using an HFS+ partition, then as a general rule of thumb keeping the utilization below 80% is a good idea for a variety of reasons. > It would be nice if LBackup could report a friendlier error message in these > sort of events. Typically, rsync will report a message such as the following when there is insufficient space for files on the destination device : rsync: mkstemp "/Volumes/backup_volume/backups/Section.inprogress/to_backup/file_for_which_there_is_not_enough_space.n3pq0e" failed: No space left on device (28) rsync_v3.0.7(33235) malloc: *** error for object 0xa: pointer being freed was not allocated *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (22413 bytes received so far) [sender] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(601) [sender=3.0.7] The key part of the message which should be in the backup log is as follows : "No space left on device (28)" I think that adding some additional reporting at the end of the log would also make sense. Providing this information to the post action-scripts (if they are enabled to run on such a failure) is a good idea, particularly from the point of view of ensuring that a glance at the tail of the log (rather than having to scroll up) could provide clear information about any problems with a backup. Further development in this area makes sense. In your log files, was their something such as the following reported anywhere within the log? > "No space left on device (28)" If you do not see such a message in the logs then please let me know. Please do not be embarrassed if you do have them there and simply did not see them. I have missed them in the past. As such, I see all the more reason to include additional information at the tail of the backup log. Your suggestion of making the problem more clear within the log and LBackup output is really valuable input to the LBackup project! Hopefully, this feature will make it into release 0.9.8r6. If you submit a patch to make this work, it will speed up this process. There are a variety of error codes returned from rsync for which it would be great to provide additional information about what has happened. If you are interested in being listed as a contributor to the project then please let me know which personal URL or company URL you wish to be associated with. I totally agree with your suggestion of more human readable and informative error reporting in addition to the information reported back directly from rsync. Please keep in mind there are a number of rsync exit codes which relate to various errors and that at present LBackup is focused on detecting problems with rsync and ensuring they are reported. I think it would also be good to detect a timeouts and other rsync error conditions for improved reliability. I am glad you have resolved your immediate issue =:^) _______________________________________________ lbackup-discussion mailing list http://www.lbackup.org Change options or unsubscribe : http://lbackup.org/mailing_lists
