Re: [rdiff-backup-users] rdiff-backup on Ubuntu stopped working, gave Errno 95

[Bill Harris]

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Okay, now I'm confused again.  Andrew nicely suggested (partially
offline) that the problem was with my filesystem -- in this case, an
external USB drive.  He conjectured that rdiff-backup couldn't run the
command

,----
| sudo mkdir /media/Ext\ 
Drive/backups/rdiff-backup-moenchweiler-etc/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-backup.tmp.0
`----

and, indeed, I didn't seem to be able to:

,----
| $ sudo mkdir /media/Ext\ 
Drive/backups/rdiff-backup-moenchweiler-etc/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-backup.tmp.0
| mkdir: cannot create directory `/media/Ext 
Drive/backups/rdiff-backup-moenchweiler-etc/rdiff-backup-data/rdiff-backup.tmp.0':
 Operation not supported
`----

Then I tried again this morning, and I could.  I even ended up with
...tmp.0 and ...tmp.1 directories in some of the folders (as you may
recall, my script backs up three directory structures using
rdiff-backup).  Now that I want to demo it to you, I can't, of course,
and I have no idea what changed.  

  As an aside, I did manage (somehow) to create those.  Not yet
  understanding what they're used for, I guessed they serve as lockfiles
  or temporary storage, and, at some time, I've both tried creating them
  to see if that helps rdiff-backup work and deleting them for the same
  reason.  

  While none of that worked, I'm curious: is it okay to have deleted
  those directories manually?  I know rdiff-backup is probably sensitive
  to what it finds in the destination directory.

I tried asking on #ubuntu and #debian but got no responses; Googling on
Ubuntu forums and elsewhere didn't turn up much, either.  Does anyone
here have any ideas of an answer or where I might ask?

Here's a partial output of fdisk -l:

,----
| Disk /dev/sdb: 300.0 GB, 300069052416 bytes
| 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 cylinders
| Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
| Disk identifier: 0xdadadada
| 
|    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
| /dev/sdb1               1        8510    68356543+   7  HPFS/NTFS
| /dev/sdb2            8511       17020    68356575   83  Linux
| /dev/sdb3           17021       25530    68356575   83  Linux
| /dev/sdb4           25531       36481    87963907+  83  Linux
`----

I've been using /dev/sdb1 for backups, and it worked as recently as
December 13.

Here's the partial output of df -h:

,----
| /dev/sdb1              66G   59G  7.0G  90% /media/Ext Drive
`----

My posting in
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6403940#post6403940 links to
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=111131.  If you go there, you
find a link to http://www.ubuntuguide.org/#windows, which gets an
internal server error today.  When it was working, it suggested ways to
modify /etc/fstab, but this is an external disk that doesn't show up in
/etc/fstab:

,----
| # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
| #
| # <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
| proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
| # /dev/sda6
| UUID=815b4894-0609-42af-918d-14ba65f9abca /               ext3    
relatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
| # /dev/sda3
| UUID=cdb05dfd-0a85-4868-b3c3-0aedfb456a58 /boot           ext3    relatime    
    0       2
| # /dev/sda7
| UUID=29c4f98a-0679-4009-b296-2688c77c1ba2 /home           ext3    relatime    
    0       2
| # /dev/sda5
| UUID=ae527f4d-3c79-4c36-b7d4-600d73ffb9cb none            swap    sw          
    0       0
| /dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0
`----

It does show up in /etc/mtab (near the bottom):

,----
| /dev/sda6 / ext3 rw,relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
| tmpfs /lib/init/rw tmpfs rw,nosuid,mode=0755 0 0
| /proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
| sysfs /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
| varrun /var/run tmpfs rw,nosuid,mode=0755 0 0
| varlock /var/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777 0 0
| udev /dev tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
| tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
| devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
| fusectl /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw 0 0
| lrm /lib/modules/2.6.27-9-generic/volatile tmpfs rw,mode=755 0 0
| /dev/sda3 /boot ext3 rw,relatime 0 0
| /dev/sda7 /home ext3 rw,relatime 0 0
| securityfs /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw 0 0
| binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
| gvfs-fuse-daemon /home/bill/.gvfs fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon 
rw,nosuid,nodev,user=bill 0 0
| /dev/sdb1 /media/Ext\040Drive fuseblk 
rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096 0 0
`----

I do have ntfs-3g installed, I am a member of the fuse group, and, as of
last night, so is root.

Thoughts?  Pointers?  If you want to see earlier history of my problem,
see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6403940#post6403940

Thanks,

Bill

PS: If worse comes to worst, does it sound reasonable to find a new
place on my external drive, perhaps on an ext3 partition this time, and
to start over with rdiff-backup?  I'm not seeing massive complaints of
problems with current usage, so I'm guessing something got updated,
perhaps with fuse or ntfs-3g, that made this not work.  I'm guessing all
starting over means is that I lose whatever history I had.
- -- 
Bill Harris                      http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/
Facilitated Systems                              Everett, WA 98208 USA
http://facilitatedsystems.com/                  phone: +1 425 337-5541
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