Re: [rdiff-backup-users] rdiff-backup, broken symlinks and python 2.4?

[Andrew Ferguson]

On Nov 8, 2008, at 9:04 PM, Andreas Olsson wrote:

> When I upgraded my servers running Ubuntu 6.06 and Ubuntu 4.0 to use
> rdiff-backup 1.2.2 I've started getting some strange warnings  
> regarding broken
> symlinks. This is a new behavior not seen using previous version of  
> rdiff-backup.

Yes, in 1.2.2, I enabled support for extended attributes on symlinks  
since it looks like modern systems support them.

> These are the warnings I get while trying to backup broken symlinks
>
> address@hidden:~/temp$ rdiff-backup from/ to/
> Warning: listattr('from/linkdir/a'): [Errno 2] No such file or  
> directory
> Warning: listattr('to/linkdir/rdiff-backup.tmp.2'): [Errno 2] No  
> such file or directory
> Warning: listattr('from/linkdir/c'): [Errno 2] No such file or  
> directory
> Warning: listattr('to/linkdir/rdiff-backup.tmp.4'): [Errno 2] No  
> such file or directory
> address@hidden:~/temp$ rm -rf to/*
> address@hidden:~/temp$ rdiff-backup --exclude-symbolic-links from/ to/
> Warning: listattr('from/linkdir/a'): [Errno 2] No such file or  
> directory
> Warning: listattr('from/linkdir/c'): [Errno 2] No such file or  
> directory

Yes, it's a warning (non-fatal).

> This by the way, is the content of my from folder
>
> address@hidden:~/temp$ ls -l from/filedir/
> total 4
> -rw-rw---- 1 andreas andreas 2 2008-11-09 02:36 b
> address@hidden:~/temp$ ls -l from/linkdir/
> total 0
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 andreas andreas 12 2008-11-09 02:36 a -> ../filedir/a
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 andreas andreas 12 2008-11-09 02:37 b -> ../filedir/b
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 andreas andreas 12 2008-11-09 02:37 c -> ../filedir/c
>
> These warnings only shows up if python-pyxattr is installed

Try updating your version of python-pyxattr. What *should* be  
happening is that the extended attribute calls are working on the  
symlink, and not the target of the symlink. Since the warning makes  
sense if the later is happening (target of the symlink), I suspect a  
bug in python-pyxattr or lower. (Or maybe older Ubuntu don't even  
support xattr on symlink).


If updating your version of python-pyxattr does not work, it may be  
that I should change the logic which leads to printing that warning.  
That is, the logic which leads to printing that warning may only make  
sense if the file in question is not a symlink.


Andrew