New Backup Server - Part 5

Part 4 got the BackupPC program running, now let's try a backup of the localhost.

This whole thing with file permissions is a little confusing. I don't know if the installation program is doing something wrong, the Ubuntu installation I'm starting with is setup in an unexpected way, or if I'm messing things up. Here's the latest:

After Part 4, I was ready to try a backup, so I fired off a backup of the local system. The backup never started, and I saw this message in the log:

localhost: mkdir /backup/pc: Permission denied at /usr/share/backuppc/bin/BackupPC_dump line 193

I looked at the /backup folder's settings, and it was set to root as the owner and group. First, I changed the group to backuppc, and then I changed the groups rights to include write.

sudo chgrp -R backuppc /backup
sudo chmod -R g+w /backup

Now, the backup has started.

Unfortunately, it didn't get very far, as the log is filled with hundreds of messages like this:

BackupPC_link got error -4 when calling MakeFileLink(/backup/pc/localhost/0/f%2fetc/fprotocols, ce42ab405aca581a1cff4f0ba04ab6c4, 1)

No backup happened.

It would be nice if I knew how backuppc should be setup, but I haven't found anything yet to help me.

More later...

UPDATE: Well, I found several sites that described a solution to this problem. It seems that while BackupPC allows one to change the $TopDir setting, it isn't recommended. So, I changed it back to the default of /var/lib/backuppc and then changed the mount point in fstab to point to that directory rather than /backup. I then ran the localhost backup without issue.

In part 6, I'll attempt a backup of the file server.