[rdiff-backup-users] Permission denied on file in backup repository

[Oliver Hookins]

Hi,

this seems to be a recurring problem, we are seeing rdiff-backup dieing due
to it not being able to make changes to a file in the destination since the
source file has non-writable permissions that have been replicated on the
destination. The traceback is below:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/backup/1.1.15/bin/rdiff-backup", line 23, in ?
    rdiff_backup.Main.error_check_Main(sys.argv[1:])
  File "/backup/1.1.15//lib64/python2.4/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py",
line 302, in error_check_Main
    try: Main(arglist)
  File "/backup/1.1.15//lib64/python2.4/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py",
line 322, in Main
    take_action(rps)
  File "/backup/1.1.15//lib64/python2.4/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py",
line 278, in take_action
    elif action == "backup": Backup(rps[0], rps[1])
  File "/backup/1.1.15//lib64/python2.4/site-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py",
line 341, in Backup
    backup.Mirror_and_increment(rpin, rpout, incdir)
  File
"/backup/1.1.15//lib64/python2.4/site-packages/rdiff_backup/backup.py", line
51, in Mirror_and_increment
    DestS.patch_and_increment(dest_rpath, source_diffiter, inc_rpath)
  File
"/backup/1.1.15//lib64/python2.4/site-packages/rdiff_backup/backup.py", line
238, in patch_and_increment
    cls.CCPP.close()
  File
"/backup/1.1.15//lib64/python2.4/site-packages/rdiff_backup/backup.py", line
482, in close
    dir_rp.chmod(perms)
  File
"/backup/1.1.15//lib64/python2.4/site-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line
843, in chmod
    self.conn.os.chmod(self.path, permissions & Globals.permission_mask)
OSError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/backup/server/etc/csf/Net/CIDR'
Fatal Error: Lost connection to the remote system

As you can see, we are running the latest version, 1.1.15, but we also saw
this with the most recent stable 1.0.5. Is there a solution to this problem
of replicating the permissions completely from the source? I'd imagine it
would be even more difficult if it were correctly replicating things like
ext3 extended attributes like the immutable flag...

-- 
Regards,
Oliver Hookins