Linux Client : Creating snapshot of "/home" failed

Hello,

I have serverall questions related to some errors. I don’t know how to solve them properly. After a few research and intensive reading of the manual, I still don’t understand… so, here I am.

I managed to install Urbackup client on debian. The backup server is another debian, running OMV 3.0 with Urbackup server plugin.
At first the server and client couldn’t see each other ; I read in the manual it could come from the server being behind a switch (5. Client discovery in local area networks :If you have NAT between server and client, you should use “Internet clients" )
Now the backup works fine and I can see the folder growing every day…
But every backup produces an error :
Server logs :

Errors
16/01/17 03:12
Creating snapshot of “/home” failed
Errors
16/01/17 03:12
Unable to create new logical volume with no extents
Errors
16/01/17 03:12
Creating snapshot of “home” failed.
Errors
16/01/17 03:12
Creating snapshot of “/portable/geogebra-portable/geogebra-portable” failed
Errors
16/01/17 03:12
Unable to create new logical volume with no extents
Errors
16/01/17 03:12
Creating snapshot of “/tmp/.com.google.Chrome.TYfg58/SingletonSocket” failed
Errors
16/01/17 03:12
Unable to create new logical volume with no extents

On the client I get :

sudo systemctl status urbackupclientbackend.service 
● urbackupclientbackend.service - UrBackup Client backend
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/urbackupclientbackend.service; enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2017-01-16 02:05:04 CET; 21h ago
 Main PID: 17833 (urbackupclientb)
   CGroup: /system.slice/urbackupclientbackend.service
           └─17833 /usr/local/sbin/urbackupclientbackend --config /etc/default/urbackupclient --no-consoletime
Jan 16 03:11:49 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: ERROR: Unable to create new logical volume with no extents
Jan 16 03:11:49 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: ERROR: Creating snapshot of "home" failed.
Jan 16 03:11:49 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: ERROR: Creating snapshot of "/portable/geogebra-portable/geogebra-portable" failed
Jan 16 03:11:49 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: ERROR: Unable to create new logical volume with no extents
Jan 16 03:11:49 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: ERROR: Creating snapshot of "/tmp/.com.google.Chrome.TYfg58/SingletonSocket" failed
Jan 16 03:11:49 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: ERROR: Unable to create new logical volume with no extents
Jan 16 03:11:50 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: WARNING: Could not find shadowcopy for "home". The client was probably restarted.
Jan 16 03:11:50 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: ERROR: Creating shadowcopy of "home" failed.
Jan 16 03:12:29 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: ERROR: Error stating file "/home/quentin/.config/google-chrome/SingletonCookie" to get file tokens. Errno: 2
Jan 16 03:12:29 Q urbackupclientbackend[17833]: ERROR: Error stating file "/home/quentin/.config/google-chrome/SingletonLock" to get file tokens. Errno: 2

I guessed I managed to enable LVM snapshot altrough it seems to be impossible with my settings.
What did I do wrong, I don’t know.

I found this config file wich seems to be responsible :
/usr/local/etc/urbackup/snapshot.cfg

#This is a key=value config file for determining the scripts/programs to create snapshots

create_filesystem_snapshot=/usr/local/share/urbackup/lvm_create_filesystem_snapshot
remove_filesystem_snapshot=/usr/local/share/urbackup/lvm_remove_filesystem_snapshot

but…

$ sudo ls usr/local/share/urbackup/
ls: cannot access usr/local/share/urbackup/: No such file or directory

From my understanding, if I config the client from the server web control pannel, it should overwrite the client configuration… but it doesn’t seem to work completely that way.

For example, i set up the client as “internet”, set up a backup window : 1-7/3-4 and exclude some files… but I can’t prevent it to snapshot the drive.

Another thing I don’t understand : are those client settings applied ? What’s their point if I already set up the client configuration on the server ?

$ urbackupclientctl list
PATH  NAME FLAGS                                          
----- ---- ---------------------------------------------- 
/home home follow_symlinks,symlinks_optional,share_hashes

Every thing I want is an up to date backup of my client /home (later I’ll add the other important drives).

What should i do ?

  • delete the snapshot.cfg ?
  • restart from scratch (nooooooooooooooo)
  • something else…

Thanks for your future answers and for the wonderfull software ! :slight_smile:

edit : I forgot to say but the client is headless. It is not what I wanted first, but I couldn’t make it work so…
edit2 : another info, I don’t know if it’s usefull :
/etc/rc.local

/usr/local/sbin/urbackupclientbackend -d

exit 0

Deleting /usr/local/etc/urbackup/snapshot.cfg should do the trick. Or better yet give the LVM volume group more storage/make the disk volume smaller so that you can create LVM snapshots.

Thanks for your answer !

I’m sorry ask so newbish questions, but there’s still something I don’t understand.
So, it’s possible for me to create snapshots of my /home but there’s a space problem.
I don’t get it : /home is in a separate partition, wich is only 40GB large. The backups are made on a 8TB raid wich is 5% full… :confused:

I don’t really need those snapshots, so firstly I’ll move the snapshot.cfg and I’ll see if it works without producing errors.

Hello again,
Moving the /usr/local/etc/urbackup/snapshot.cfg file didn’t change anything about those errors… :confused:
I still don’t know how to prevent them…

It’s not about how free is disk and more about whether you can create a new LV. For duration of backup that LV can be as small as few percent of the LV it’s trying to backup (So 1-2GB for 40GB drive is more than enough for how long it will take to backup). I suggest you read up on how to make LV snapshots manually and that will help you understand what you need to do to free up LV :slight_smile:

You can start by checking if you have free space in your VG by executing “vgs” in terminal.

Hi! Thanks for great software and nice support!
I have similar configuration (OMV with urBackup server + linux client)

Just to be clear, before I start shrinking the volumes, I would like to ask for your opinion.

So I have laptop with linux debian and LVM. Installed with default config - single Phisical Volume and two Logical Volumes:
root with roughly 460GB (60GB free) and SWAP - 20GB

So the Volume group have no free PE. If I understand correctly, there must be some free PE for UrBackup to create the temporary LV for it. I am thinking to shrink a bit the root LV for it.

Will the 10GB be enough?

Thanks in advance!
Martins

It depends on how much of your data changes during backup. That is how much must be stored in the snapshot storage.

Depends on how much you are backing up (as in, how long does it take to do the backup). Snapshot space is there only to store differences while snapshot is running. If there are no or little changes on the system while backup is running - 10GB is more than enough :slight_smile: