I have UrBackup server 2.0.33 running on Ubuntu Server 16.04 backing up my Ubuntu Mate 16.04 laptop. I am using the dattobd snapshot device for backups. I have noticed my disk space getting lower and my incremental backups are way too large for what files would be changed on a daily basis. I did some looking around and found in my root directory a bunch of .overlay_ files and 2 .dattabd_ files which took up close to 100GB of disk space. Are these files supposed to be deleted after the backup? It would also be nice to be able to tell the client to NOT follow links as I have several links in my home directory for convenience and these get backed up too.
The missing option to not follow symbolic-links in the GUI is unfortunate. There is a way to do it. From: https://forums.urbackup.org/t/urbackup-server-client-2-0-4-beta-with-mac-os-x-client-restore-2-0-1/1761/21
With UrBackup 2.0.x server+client you can disable following symlinks by flags to backup directories.
I.e. if you set no flags the default flags are follow_symlinks,symlinks_optional,share_hashes
So if you do not want to follow symlinks outside of the backup dir you set e.g. default directories to backup to /|root/symlinks_optional,share_hashes (or add /symlinks_optional,share_hashes to name in the select directories dialog). I’ll have to add this to the GUI at some point.
If you add the paths via urbackupclientctl, there is a switch to not follow symlinks, as well.
Could you have a look at which scenarios cause the .overlay_/.datto_ files not to be deleted and/or put it into debug logging mode and post that? Theoretically it should delete those files (see the dattobd_remove_filesystem_snapshot script).
So I need to add this flag to each directory or just once? Let me get this taken care of then I will tackle the .overlay issue as they may be related as I notice it tries to follow a link in my home directory to /proc which is not a good idea me thinks.
This is what I have set: /home/symlinks_optional,share_hashes;/etc/symlinks_optional,share_hashes;/boot/symlinks_optional,share_hashes;/usr/symlinks_optional,share_hashes;/opt/symlinks_optional,share_hashes;/var/symlinks_optional,share_hashes;/data/symlinks_optional,share_hashes
okay I’m an idiot! I forgot to put in the | symbol. Looks like its running now.
So when you change settings to backup directories it causes the next incremental to backup everything again like a full backup would? This is what is happening now. My last full was 2 days ago.
Ok, so the next backup ran and this is the end of the debug log:
09/03/16 12:21 INFO Saving file metadata…
09/03/16 12:21 INFO Writing new file list…
09/03/16 12:22 INFO All metadata was present
09/03/16 12:22 INFO Number of copyied file entries from last backup is 560387
09/03/16 12:22 DEBUG Creating symbolic links. -1
09/03/16 12:22 DEBUG Creating symbolic links. -2
09/03/16 12:22 DEBUG Symbolic links created.
09/03/16 12:22 INFO Transferred 73.077 GB - Average speed: 60.854 MBit/s
09/03/16 12:22 DEBUG Script does not exist urbackup/post_incr_filebackup
09/03/16 12:22 INFO Time taken for backing up client jason-ThinkPad-W530: 2h 53m 54s
09/03/16 12:22 INFO Backup succeeded
Seems there is a script missing?
That’s a server log. The pertinent information would be in the client log.
The client log located in /var/logs only has these types of errors:
2016-09-03 09:53:11: ERROR: Error stating file “/mnt/urbackup_snaps/6156e31ba9bb0d62780e76837466a71c16e6064e54e2527f/var/lib/schroot/chroots/click-ubuntu-sdk-15.04-amd64/usr/share/man/fr/man1/faked.1.gz” to get file tokens. Errno: 2
2016-09-03 09:53:11: ERROR: Error stating file “/mnt/urbackup_snaps/6156e31ba9bb0d62780e76837466a71c16e6064e54e2527f/var/lib/schroot/chroots/click-ubuntu-sdk-15.04-amd64/usr/share/man/fr/man1/fakeroot.1.gz” to get file tokens. Errno: 2
2016-09-03 09:53:18: ERROR: Error stating file “/mnt/urbackup_snaps/6156e31ba9bb0d62780e76837466a71c16e6064e54e2527f/var/lib/schroot/chroots/click-ubuntu-sdk-15.04-amd64/usr/share/man/sv/man1/faked.1.gz” to get file tokens. Errno: 2
2016-09-03 09:53:18: ERROR: Error stating file “/mnt/urbackup_snaps/6156e31ba9bb0d62780e76837466a71c16e6064e54e2527f/var/lib/schroot/chroots/click-ubuntu-sdk-15.04-amd64/usr/share/man/sv/man1/fakeroot.1.gz” to get file tokens. Errno: 2
2016-09-03 13:01:57: WARNING: Shutting down (Signal 15)
No mention of why the .Overlay and .dattobd files are not cleaned up or anything about the missing script mentioned in the server log.
I downloaded the source but I could not locate that missing script file name in there either. UrBackup runs very well on Windows clients but I have had nothing but issues with the two Linux clients I have tried to setup. At this point I’m thinking that I would be better off writing some simple tar scripts to backup my Linux clients to an NFS share as I have spent a lot of time trying to get UrBackup to work on my Linux boxes.