Author: Jan Henkins Date: To: users Subject: Re: [bitfolk] A question for users of the backup service - what is
a successful run?
Hello Andy,
I don't use the backup service, but if I did I would definitely want to
know about all failures.
Cheerio,
Jan Henkins
On 11/01/2021 15:57, Andy Smith wrote: > Hi,
>
> A question for those who use the backup service¹:
>
> Currently we mark the backup run as successful if rsync exits with a
> success value.
>
> There are only two exceptions: exit code 2 and exit code 24. Both of
> those relate to files which rsync thought existed but ended up not
> existing when it came to actually transfer them. I consider those
> transient issues related to backing up a filesystem that is in use,
> and not a reason to consider the whole backup run as failed.
>
> So what about files that our rsync process cannot read? At the
> moment that produces an exit code of 23, and is considered a failed
> run, even though everything else got transferred. This eventually
> causes a "backup age" monitoring alert because the last successful
> backup run was too long ago. Even though everything else is actually
> being backed up.
>
> If we consider error code 23 as okay then a backup run that failed
> to transfer one or more files due to permissions is still considered
> a success and the alert goes away. But you possibly never find out
> about what happened because you don't get to see the logs, you would
> have to check every file in your backups to be sure they're there.
>
> If we continue to consider error code 23 as a failure of the whole
> run then you will have to either allow our rsync to read the files
> concerned or else put up with perpetual alerts - which you could
> silence but then would never tell you about other problems.
>
> What should we do?
>
> Note that most of you allow our rsync to run as root so it can
> generally read everything and you'll never experience this. But in
> theory you could if you found some way to deny root permission to
> read something.
>
> I would ask for opinions only from those who make use of the backup
> service, as root or not.
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
> ¹ https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Backups >
>
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