Hi there, On Fri, 18 Jul 2025, Matthew Pounsett wrote:
For I/O preserving reasons that aren't really relevant to the list, I've temporarily had my backup server on MaxBackups = 1 for a couple of weeks. I also have a backup client that is on a tightly restricted BlackoutPeriod of 8.0 through 23.9 (allowing backups from 23:59 through 08:00). The combination of these two things has resulted in the blackout server never receiving an automatically queued backup for two straight weeks. ... ... This is my guess about what's going on ... ... Thoughts? Am I completely off base?
Is there anything in the logs which might shed any light? Are you saying that during the period in which you allow backups there should be enough time to perform a backup for every client, but that a client wasn't getting backed up despite that? If there was enough time then something seems wrong, but if the 8.1 hours is too short I'd guess one way or another you'll have a problem. Buut I'd call it a configuration problem. (BTW I don't think 23.9 in the blackout times means 23:59. More like 23:54.) Since February 2020 I have had MaxBackups set at 1, and the blackout period for all the clients set at Monday-Saturday from 07:30 to 23:30. This seems more or less identical to your setup yet I've never seen the symptoms you describe. It was a fresh V4 install. The host status page is on a tab in my browser. I keep it permanently open, and most mornings the first thing I'll do when I switch on my screen is check the 'Last Backup (days)' column on the host status page. It's very unusual for me to see anything unexpected there, but if I do it's usually a network problem, a host down, or something like that. I think the only times I have seen BackupPC fail to start the backup for a host is if I've dropped multiple gigabytes of junk in a silly place, so that a share that should take a few minutes to back up takes a couple of days, and nothing else gets a chance to be queued. I wonder if there's something else perhaps, er, unusual in your config which might have a bearing on the issue. ISTR that you converted your backups from V3 to V4 quite recently. I'm not sure how thoroughly the convert process has been exercised and I wonder if it's relevant. We probably should look at the entire config. I guess it's not an issue for you if you now have MaxBackups at some higher number, but if you have any qualms you could always install a V4 system from scratch on a spare machine, making a bare minimum of configuration changes so that if thigs go awry it's easier to nail down. -- 73, Ged. _______________________________________________ BackupPC-users mailing list BackupPC-users@lists.sourceforge.net List: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/backuppc-users Wiki: https://github.com/backuppc/backuppc/wiki Project: https://backuppc.github.io/backuppc/
