[Box Backup] Re: client connection error

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Sean,

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008, admin at vancocomputing.net wrote:

> > Please could you try requesting a sync with "bbackupctl sync" while 
> > running bbackupd with -DVT and let me know what bbackupd says?
> 
> Wow, I got a eyefull of files processed on the client (THANK YOU!! - 
> after finishing this e-mail I've seen at least a half gig transfered), 
> it's taking some time... I got to see activity in real time as I ran it 
> with the -DVT in one SSH window and the sync in another. Basically every 
> file was listed as "not on server".

That's to be expected if nothing was backed up so far.

> I presume then that this is working? On the bbstored server in
> /backup_files/backup/00000001/ I'm seeing quite a few .rfw files. I
> presume those are the compressed and encrypted files from my client?

Yes.

> I thought the ssh connection to that system was a bit slow to respond, 
> which tells me alot of data is being transfered. Should I modify the 
> init.d script to allow -DVT, or something else?

You should not need to run bbackupd with -DVT normally, and if you do that 
in the init script it will probably never terminate.

Could you try running bbackupd with -kVT instead? It should go into the 
background but continue writing to your console. This may mess up the 
console a bit, but it will help to figure out why it's not working when 
you just run bbackupd normally in the background.

> Oh, BTW, "/etc/init.d/bbstored restart" does not start the daemon back 
> up, even though the text says "restarted".

Can you have a look at the initscript to see what's wrong? I'm afraid I 
didn't write it and don't have a debian box offhand to test on. Logs in 
/var/log/messages (or /var/log/box) may help to understand the problem.

> Is there any way to run a test to see how much data will be transfered 
> after compression/encryption?

I'm afraid not, but you could guess a 2:1 compression ratio unless you 
have a lot of uncompressable binary files, in which case it's likely to be 
more like 1:1.

> I only have 100GB allocated to bbstored ATM, and I don't want to 
> accidentally crash anything.

Nothing will crash, the client will stop uploading when it hits the limit.

> It would also be nice to have an option (I know, you're still working on 
> it, and this is just a low-priority "convenience" request) to see the 
> items transfered in KB, MB or GB instead of bytes.

I'll think about it, but probably the best option is to run a log parser 
like bbreporter.py and have that process the numbers into something more 
human-readable for you.

Which specific log messages are you referring to?

> BTW, thank you for the clarification on the /var/bbackupd. That was 
> pretty much was I had guessed shortly after sending the last e-mail.

No problem, I've written it up on the wiki now as well.

Cheers, Chris.
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