incremental snapshots store more files than needed

Thank you for using sbackup and for taking the time reporting this bug.

In order to track down the cause of the problem, please add a log file (debug mode).

Thanks for your help.

i've since moved to bacula but am interestingly having the same issues with the incremental backups for the disk. so, unfortunately i cannot provide you with the requested information but it does appear to be an issue that is outside of sbackup.

Hi,

I've also experienced this problem. In my case I did a backup last WE, and did another one today: sbackup decided to do an incremental backup, which should be very small (actually empty) as pretty much no file changed in the last 90 days:

$ find /home/musique/ -ctime -90
/home/musique/
/home/musique/.config
/home/musique/.config/autostart
/home/musique/.config/autostart/indicator-weather.desktop

sbackup does think there is almost nothing to backup:

2011-10-22 10:11:07,092 - INFO: Last full backup is fresh (42 days old )-> make an increment
2011-10-22 10:11:07,093 - INFO: Instantané '2011-10-22_10.11.07.092778.workstation.inc' en cours de création.
2011-10-22 10:11:07,093 - INFO: Réglage de la Base à '2011-10-16_10.54.21.443230.workstation.inc'.
2011-10-22 10:11:07,093 - INFO: Réglage des fichiers de sauvegarde.
2011-10-22 10:11:07,233 - INFO: Réglage des exclusions de fichiers.
2011-10-22 10:11:07,233 - INFO: Réglage du format de compression à `0`
2011-10-22 10:11:07,234 - INFO: L'option 'Suivre les liens symboliques' est désactivée.
2011-10-22 10:11:07,234 - INFO: Inspection du système de fichiers et collecte des informations sur les fichiers
2011-10-22 10:11:08,956 - INFO: Résumé de la sauvegarde
2011-10-22 10:11:08,956 - INFO: Nombre de répertoires : 1026.
2011-10-22 10:11:08,956 - INFO: Nombre total de fichiers : 2837.
2011-10-22 10:11:08,956 - INFO: Nombre de liens symboliques : 0.
2011-10-22 10:11:08,956 - INFO: Nombre de fichiers inclus dans l'instantané : 1.
2011-10-22 10:11:08,957 - INFO: Nombre de nouveaux fichiers (également inclus) : 1.
2011-10-22 10:11:08,957 - INFO: Nombre de fichiers ignorés dans l'instantané incrémental : 2836.
2011-10-22 10:11:08,957 - INFO: Nombre de fichiers exclus de force : 0.
2011-10-22 10:11:08,957 - INFO: Nombre de fichiers exclus selon la configuration : 0.
2011-10-22 10:11:08,957 - INFO: L'espace libre maximum requis est '0 Mo 513 Ko 800'.

However the tar file is 9.6GB so far, and still growing. I've had this before and sbackup basically ended up doing a full backup.

I tried running the tar command sbackup uses -- I simply added a "-f /tmp/test.tar" to make things simpler and "-v" to see which files it backs up:

# /bin/tar -cS --directory=/ --ignore-failed-read --blocking-factor 20 --totals --files-from=/tmp/sbackup/includes.list --exclude-from=/tmp/sbackup/excludes.list --listed-incremental=/tmp/sbackup/files.snar -f /tmp/test.tar -v

Now if I add "--no-check-device", it pretty much doesn't backup anything apart from the folders (the file structure, not the file themselves), and I end up with a backup of 1.1MB:

# /bin/tar -cS --directory=/ --ignore-failed-read --blocking-factor 20 --totals --files-from=/tmp/sbackup/includes.list --exclude-from=/tmp/sbackup/excludes.list --listed-incremental=/tmp/sbackup/files.snar -f /tmp/test.tar -v --no-check-device
/home/musique/.config/
/home/musique/.config/autostart/
[...]
/home/musique/tmp/tmp/
Nombre total d'octets écrits: 1116160 (1,1MiB, 7,5MiB/s)

So I can only assume that the device number changes (see http://www.gnu.org/software/automake/manual/tar/Incremental-Dumps.html for more details) on my setup which has LVM on top of a software MD RA...

Same problem here (my main disk was changing device name after restart) - and adding "--no-check-device" to tar.py solved the problem.

Here is the diff (sbackup 0.11.3):

*** tar.py 2011-12-12 07:55:08.149261001 +0400
--- tar.py.orig 2011-12-12 07:53:11.209261001 +0400
***************
*** 249,256 ****
      options = ["-cS", "--directory=%s" % _FOP.pathsep,
                 "--ignore-failed-read",
                 "--blocking-factor", str(constants.TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR),
! "--totals",
! "--no-check-device"
                ]

      # includes and excludes
--- 249,255 ----
      options = ["-cS", "--directory=%s" % _FOP.pathsep,
                 "--ignore-failed-read",
                 "--blocking-factor", str(constants.TAR_BLOCKING_FACTOR),
! "--totals"
                ]

      # includes and excludes

I have/had the same problem here. I tried to write my backups into an EncFS-folder and the increment backups were to big.

Here is a little excerpt out of my debug log file. (I'm using Ubuntu 11.10 and sBackup 11.4)

I'm not sure if this helps, because the end of the log is maybe missing.

PS: I also tried the solution with "--no-check-device" and it worked the last two times.

Thanks for your help. I've applied the fix to 0.11.4 and committed it to lp:sbackup/0.11. I'll prepare a bugfix release asap. Any help would be appreciated.