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<h3>Table of contents</h3>
<ol><li><a href="#__future__">When I try to run rdiff-backup it says
"ImportError: No module named __future__" or "SyntaxError: invalid
syntax". What's happening?</a></li>
<li><a href="#verbosity">What do the different verbosity levels mean?</a></li>
<li><a href="#windows">Does rdiff-backup run under Windows?</a></li>
<li><a href="#remove_dir">My backup set contains some files that I just realized I don't want/need backed up. How do I remove them from the backup volume to save space?</li>
<li><a href="#redhat">How do I install the RPMs on Redhat linux system?</a></li>
<li><a href="#solaris">Does rdiff-backup work under Solaris?</a></li>
</ol>
<h3>Questions and Answers</h3>
<ol>
<a name="__future__">
<li><strong>When I try to run rdiff-backup it says "ImportError: No
module named __future__" or "SyntaxError: invalid syntax". What's
happening?</strong>
<P>rdiff-backup versions 0.2.x require Python version 2.1 or later,
and versions 0.3.x and later require Python version 2.2 or later. If
you don't know what version of python you are running, type in "python
-V" from the shell. I'm sorry if this is inconvenient, but
rdiff-backup uses generators, iterators, nested scoping, and
static/class methods extensively, and these were only added in version
2.2.
<P>If you have two versions of python installed, and running "python"
defaults to an early version, you'll probably have to change the first
line of the rdiff-backup script. For instance, you could set it to:
<pre>
#/usr/bin/env python2.2
</pre>
</li>
<a name="verbosity">
<li><strong>What do the different verbosity levels mean?</strong>
<P>There is no formal specification, but here is a rough description
(settings are always cumulative, so 5 displays everything 4 does):
<P>
<table cellspacing="10">
<tr><td>0</td><td>No information given</td></tr>
<tr><td>1</td><td>Fatal Errors displayed</td></tr>
<tr><td>2</td><td>Warnings</td></tr>
<tr><td>3</td><td>Important messages, and maybe later some global statistics (default)</td></tr>
<tr><td>4</td><td>Some global settings, miscellaneous messages</td></tr>
<tr><td>5</td><td>Mentions which files were changed</td></tr>
<tr><td>6</td><td>More information on each file processed</td></tr>
<tr><td>7</td><td>More information on various things</td></tr>
<tr><td>8</td><td>All logging is dated</td></tr>
<tr><td>9</td><td>Details on which objects are moving across the connection</td></tr>
</table>
<a name="windows">
<li><strong>Does rdiff-backup run under Windows?</strong>
<P>Yes, apparently it is possible. First, follow Jason Piterak's
instructions:
<pre>
Subject: Cygwin rdiff-backup
From: Jason Piterak <Jason_Piterak@c-i-s.com>
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 16:54:24 -0500 (13:54 PST)
To: rdiff-backup@keywest.Stanford.EDU
Hello all,
On a lark, I thought I would attempt to get rdiff-backup to work under
Windows98 under Cygwin. We have a number of NT/Win2K servers in the field
that I'd love to be backing up via rdiff-backup, and this was the start of
getting that working.
SUMMARY:
o You can get all the pieces for rdiff-backup working under Cygwin.
o The backup process works up to the point of writing any files with
timestamps.
... This is because the ':' character is reserved for Alternate Data
Stream (ADS) file designations under NTFS.
HOW TO GET IT WORKING (to a point, anyway):
o Install Cygwin
o Download the Python 2.2 update through the Cygwin installer and install.
o Download the librsync libraries from the usual place, but before
compiling...
o Cygwin does not use/provide glibc. Because of this, you have to repoint
some header files in the Makefile:
-- Make sure that you have /usr/include/inttypes.h
redirected to /usr/include/sys/types.h. Do this by:
create a file /usr/include/inttypes.h with the contents:
#include <sys/types.h>
o Put rdiff-backup in your PATH, as you normally would.
</pre>
Then, whenever you use rdiff-backup (or at least if you are backing up
to or restoring from a Windows system), use the
<strong>--windows-time-format</strong> switch, which will tell
rdiff-backup not to put a colon (":") in a filename (this option was
added after Jason posted his message). Finally, as Michael Muegel
points out, you have to exclude all files from the source directory
which have colons in them, so add something like the --exclude ".*:.*"
option. In the near future some quoting facility may be added to deal
with these issues.
</li>
<P>
<a name="remove_dir">
<li><strong>My backup set contains some files that I just realized I
don't want/need backed up. How do I remove them from the backup
volume to save space?</strong>
<P>Let's take an example. Suppose you ran
<pre>rdiff-backup /usr /backup</pre>
and now realize that you don't want /usr/local backed up on /backup.
Next time you back up, you run
<pre>rdiff-backup --exclude /usr/local /usr /backup</pre>
so that /usr/local is no longer copied to /backup/usr/local.
However, old information about /usr/local is still present in
/backup/rdiff-backup-data/increments/usr/local. You could wait for
this information to expire and then run rdiff-backup with the
--remove-older-than option, or you could remove the increments
manually by typing:
<pre>rm -rf /backup/rdiff-backup-data/increments/usr/local
rm /backup/rdiff-backup-data/increments/usr/local.*.dir</pre>
</li>
<P>
<a name="redhat">
<li><strong>How do I install the RPMs on a Redhat linux system?</strong>
<P>The problem is that the default version of python for Redhat 7.x is
1.5.x, and rdiff-backup requires python >= 2.2. Redhat/rawhide
provides python 2.2 RPMs, but they are packaged under the "python2"
name.
<P>So, if you are running Redhat 7.x:
<ol>
<li>Make sure the python2 >= 2.2 package is installed,
leaving python 1.5 the way it is
<li>Install the rdiff-backup RPM, using --nodeps if it only complains
about python 2.2 missing.
<li>Edit the first line of /usr/bin/rdiff-backup so it says<pre>
#!/usr/bin/env python2
</pre>
so "python2" gets run instead of "python".
</ol>
<P>You can also upgrade using a non-Redhat python 2.2 RPM and avoid
the above steps (this is what I did). Because of all the dependencies
it is usually easier to use source RPMs for this.
</li>
<P>
<a name="solaris">
<li><strong>Does rdiff-backup work under Solaris?</strong>
<P>There may be a problem with rdiff-backup and Solaris' libthread.
Adding "ulimit -n unlimited" may fix the problem though. Here is a
post by Kevin Spicer on the subject:
<pre>
Subject: RE: Crash report....still not^H^H^H working
From: "Spicer, Kevin" <Kevin.Spicer@bmrb.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 23:36:42 +0100
To: rdiff-backup@keywest.Stanford.EDU
Quick mail to follow up on this..
My rdiff backup (on Solaris 2.6 if you remember) has now worked
reliably for nearly two weeks after I added...
ulimit -n unlimited
to the start of my cron job and created a wrapper script on the remote
machine which looked like this...
#!/bin/sh
ulimit -n unlimited
rdiff-backup --server
exit
And changed the remote schema on the command line of rdiff-backup to
call the wrapper script rather than rdiff-backup itself on the remote
machine. As for the /dev/zero thing I've done a bit of Googleing and
it seems that /dev/zero is used internally by libthread on Solaris
(which doesn't really explain why its opening more than 64 files - but
at least I think I've now got round it).
</pre>
</li>
</ol>
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