Kam on 16 Feb 2009 07:30:39 -0800 |
-- Kam http://kamsalisbury.com GPG key: FAF1751E -----Original Message----- From: bergman@merctech.com Subj: Re: [PLUG] Backup fun Date: Sun Feb 15, 2009 9:26 pm Size: 4K To: "Philadelphia Linux User's Group Discussion List"<plug@lists.phillylinux.org> In the message dated: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:54:59 EST, The pithy ruminations from Adam Zion on <[PLUG] Backup fun> were: => OK, I purchased a Western Digital Element 1TB external backup drive => for my linux server. I have a 300 GB drive to back up, so there's What filesystem is in use on the external drive? What were the fielsystem options? => plenty of room to spare. => => But no. When I use rsync to back up the data, it bombs out w/a drive Using what options to rsync? => full error before even completing the first back up- which would be Is "drive full" really the error message? Is that returned from rsync, or logged by the kernel to /var/log/message or dmesg? Where there other error messages? +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ [As an aside--not solely directed to Adam--diagnosing problems via email is difficult enough...if you (collective) want accurate answers, please provide useful data, such as: the exact command name (with options) the exact text of error messages (from the application, from system log files, from dmesg, etc...obfuscated for privacy if neeed) relevent version numbers for applications, distributions, the kernel, etc. See: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html Thanks] +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ => far less than 1 TB of data. => The "drive full" error can come from several causes: [A] Are you using the "--sparse" option to rsync? If not, then any "sparse" files[1] will be recreated as real files on the target drive. For example, here's a 4GB sparse file on a filesystem that has only 1GB available. If I rsync that file without using "--sparse", I'd get a 4GB file. [bergman@mirchi tmp]$ df -hl . Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda11 2.3G 815M 1.5G 36% /var [bergman@mirchi tmp]$ dd if=/dev/zero of=sparse-file bs=1 count=0 seek=4196M 0+0 records in 0+0 records out 0 bytes (0 B) copied, 2.5423e-05 s, 0.0 kB/s [bergman@mirchi tmp]$ df -h . Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda11 2.3G 815M 1.5G 36% /var [bergman@mirchi tmp]$ ls -l sparse-file -rw-rw-r-- 1 bergman bergman 4399824896 Feb 15 20:56 sparse-file [bergman@mirchi tmp]$ ls -lh sparse-file -rw-rw-r-- 1 bergman bergman 4.1G Feb 15 20:56 sparse-file [B] Are you certain that the filesystem is out of space, not out of inodes? What does "df -h" show on the external drive? What does "df -hi" show? When you created the filesystem on the external drive, what options did you give? If you don't specify options, filesystems are created in a way that attempts to be appropriate based on the size of the drive....for larger drives, this means larger block sizes and a correspondingly smaller number of inodes. If the source disk contains an extremely large number of small files, it's possible that it simply has more files than there are inodes on the target disk. This usage--a very high count of very small files was typical for Usenet news systems about a decade ago, so you may see mkfs or documentation options that refer to creating a filesystem intended for netnews. => Since I highly doubt that cluster overhang is an issue, can anyone => else think why this drive would be running into such an error? When I => check it on Windows it reports as a 1 TB drive, so it's unlikely to be ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Hmmm...that implies to me that you haven't formatted the disk specifically for Linux, and that it's running a Windows-compatible filesystem (vfat or ntfs). Some filesystems don't support symbolic links...so if you're running rsync with the "--copy-links" option, that will turn any symbolic links on the source filesystem into real files on the target drive. => a physical error w/the drive. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparse_file ----- Mark Bergman Biker, Rock Climber, Unix mechanic, IATSE #1 Stagehand http://wwwkeys.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=bergman%40merctech.com I want a newsgroup with a infinite S/N ratio! Now taking CFV on: rec.motorcycles.stagehands.pet-bird-owners.pinballers.unix-supporters 15+ So Far--Want to join? Check out: http://www.panix.com/~bergman ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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