Due to external disk problem backups were made on internal storage

general discussion
1

Hi
I have a the following backup system :

  • Server: raspberry pi 3
  • Clients: 3 windows desktops
  • Storage: An attached 4TB usb disk

The system worked very good since 2019

Lately I got few messages about backups failing due to “full disk”. Took me some time to figure out that the usb powered hub had gone bad and the external disk didn’t work for a while. The system kept making backups on the folder where the mount point was on the internal SD disk.

What are the necessary steps to fix the problem:

Notes:

  • The SD is full so when trying to do anything it says that there is not enough space
  • I don’t have a problem deleting backups

Thanks is advance
Beez

2

Hi, Just wanted to clarify some details:

  1. The external disk is OK, the powered hub was bad and I have replaced it.
  2. The remaining problem is to find a sequence of steps to remove the local SD data and reattach the external drive

Thanks in advanced
Beez

3

Hi Beez, this a common Linux ‘issue’. You have a mountpoint linked to a location on the local server, for example you mounted the remote device sdb (with the first partion containing your data as sdb1) and mounted it to /Backups. (mount /dev/sdb1 /Backups)

However then the link to the external device went bad, the mountpoint got dismounted, but the /Backups folder is still there, only using the local storage on the server. This leading to ‘disk full’ messages when you filled the raspberry pi’s storage up with a backup from Urbackup.

I’m not that familiar with a pi, but could you not open a console session, browse to the location of the backup mountpoint, that now contains local backups, remove the local backups and then remount the external drive on the original backup location?

4

personally I’d remove the sdcard, put it into a linux pc and browse to the sdcard contents and remove the backup files…

5

Thanks for the reply.
Think on the Raspberry pi as a regular linux server.
Should I unmount the external drive and delete everything under the mount point? (under the mount point I see bunch of folders) then remount?

Regards,

Beez

6

Yes.After remounting use the Remove Unknown process to clean the database of any missing files. These should be automatically re-copied when doing your next backup.