On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 8:52 AM Tomas Kuchta <tomas.kuchta.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2022, 09:16 Rich Shepard <rshep...@appl-ecosys.com> wrote: > > > Last night's incremental backup for /home has an error: > > Rsync-Errors > (/media/backup/salmo-home/20220322-0030/tree/../rsync_error): > > ========================================================================= > > RSYNC_ERR: > > RSYNC_ERR: > > RSYNC_ERR: *** Execution cycle 0 *** > > RSYNC_ERR: > > RSYNC_ERR: file has vanished: > > "/home/rshepard/.spamassassin/bayes.lock" > > RSYNC_ERR: rsync warning: some files vanished before they could be > > transferred (code 24) at main.c(1189) [sender=3.1.3] > > > > I want to understand this error. > > > > Looks to me that the bayes.lock is created when a new email message > arrives > > and is removed when spamassassin has processed the message. If that's the > > case why would rsync be looking for a file that was removed? > > . > > > There is delay between a) when rsync collecting what needs to transfer and > b) the actual transfer. Files changed between a) and b), that is what is > happening. > > You could avoid it by 1) not writing/deleting stuff on the disk when your > backup is in progress or 2) by making filesystem snapshot and backing up > the snapshot. 1) is probably not practical. 2) would require filesystem > change to COW filesystem such as btrfs on Linux or zfs on BSD. Common > practice is to live with the errors or 2). > > Best, Tomas > Additional options, 3) exclude files/folders that don't need to be ( or should not be ) backed up, e.g. lock files. 4) shut down processes before making backups ( variation of #1 ) 5) run things in a VM/container, snapshot the VM/container, and backup from the snapshot ( or save the entire snapshot ). As for filesystems, IIRC, LVM allows for snapshotting. I haven't played with that in a while ( haven't had a need ), so I'm fuzzy on remembering the details. Also, I believe ZFS is available for Linux. I haven't tried it on Linux, so can't speak to how well it works compared to its implementation on BSD. One last thought: I remember years ago chatting with a veteran sysadmin ( before DevOps became a thing ) who said "I don't give a rats about your backup. When was the last time you tested a restore?" ( paraphrased, as his word choice was a bit more colorful. ) Good luck and let us know how things go. Regards, - Robert
