Re: [rdiff-backup-users] 1.1.11: Cannot create a valid backup with cygwin

[Andrew Ferguson]

Ralph Lehmann wrote:
> While the backup process, all seems to be fine but a check of the
> destination directory fails:
> 
> cd /test
> rm -rf bar
> rdiff-backup -v9 --force -b foo/ bar/ (see attached backup.log)
> -----------------------------------------------
> $ rdiff-backup --check-destination-dir bar/
> Fatal Error: Bad rdiff-backup-data dir on destination side
> 
> The rdiff-backup data directory
> bar/rdiff-backup-data
> exists, but we cannot find a valid current_mirror marker.

...snip...

> Wed Jun 27 10:18:27 2007  Writing mirror marker 
> bar/rdiff-backup-data/current_mirror.2007-06-27T10;05818;05826+02;05800.data

And I bet your second attempt to backup will fail as well, with the same
error message.

What's happened is that the current_mirror marker's filename has been
escaped (the :'s in 2007-06-27T10:18:26+02:00.data have been transformed
to ;058, since 58 is the decimal ASCII code for ':'). The code that
creates the file escaped the filename, and the code that checks for the
file uses code that fails to un-escape the filename. Thus, rdiff-backup
can never find an escaped current_mirror marker.

This bug was discovered back in February when someone accidentally
escaped just about every character. I looked into it a little while ago,
but realized that the correct fix might require extensive regression
testing. At the time, I decided it wasn't worth fixing, since no
filesystem should require escaping the marker and no one else had filed
a bug report. Guess I forgot about escaping the ':' on Windows.

So, I can probably fix this one, but it won't get fixed overnight. Maybe
in a week or two.

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Ferguson - address@hidden