Re: [rdiff-backup-users] IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor

[Andrew Ferguson]

On Sep 16, 2008, at 7:13 AM, Nejc Škoberne wrote:
> Here is what I get when running the command:
>
> Processing changed file usr/jail/hostSvarun/lib/libreadline.so.6
> Processing changed file usr/jail/hostSvarun/lib/libsbuf.so.3
> Processing changed file usr/jail/hostSvarun/lib/libufs.so.3
> Processing changed file usr/jail/hostSvarun/lib/libutil.so.5
> Processing changed file usr/jail/hostSvarun/lib/libz.so.3
> Exception '[Errno 9] Bad file descriptor' raised of class '<type  
> 'exceptions.IOError'>':
>  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/rdiff_backup/ 
> robust.py", line 32, in check_common_error
>    try: return function(*args)
>  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/rdiff_backup/ 
> rpath.py", line 1366, in read
>    def read(self, length = -1): return self.file.read(length)
>  File "/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/rdiff_backup/hash.py",  
> line 42, in read
>    buf = self.fileobj.read(length)


Hi Nejc,

This error occurs while rdiff-backup is simply reading the file and  
calculating the SHA1 checksum along the way. Since this is code that  
has been tested in rdiff-backup for years, and I haven't seen any  
error reports like this one before, I'm going to have to say that this  
is a hardware problem. I am going to guess that it is a memory  
problem, but it could be filesystem corruption, or even CPU issue (we  
recently saw one of those on the mailing list).

It turns out, rdiff-backup exercises your hardware pretty well, much  
more so than a simple cp command. I would suggest running memtest and  
the disk test software from your HDD manufacturer for starters. I know  
Apple and Dell have very good hardware fitness test software, perhaps  
your manufacturer does as well.


good luck,
Andrew