Re: [rdiff-backup-users] [Errno 39] Directory not empty

[Stephen Isard]

On Tue, 17 Dec 2013, Dominic Raferd wrote:

> I see from http://www.nongnu.org/rdiff-backup/FAQ.html#dir_not_empty that 
> there is (or was) a known problem giving this error message when running 
> rdiff-backup over NFS. The workaround is "don't run rdiff-backup over NFS" 
> which may not be helpful to you.

No, I'm not using NFS.

> There was also a bug report about a similar problem at 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=652821, which appears to relate 
> to a hidden directory.
>
> These aside, maybe the source directory is changing in some critical way 
> between when rdiff-backup started the current run and when it comes to 
> process this directory, so it is upset by the inconsistency? Workarounds you 
> could try:
>
> - make sure Firefox is closed when rdiff-backup is running; or
> - exclude this startupCache directory explicitly from the backup
>
> A better solution would be to back up from an LVM snapshot - but not easy to 
> implement unless you already have /home under LVM.

Thanks for the suggestions, Dominic.  I don't _think_ the startupCache 
directory was present on the backup source at any point in the run of 
rdiff-backup.

I'll check for hidden files in the backup directory when I get a chance, 
but I'm running rdiff-backup with sudo and the whole .mozilla subtree 
belongs to the user, so I don't see why a hidden file in the directory 
should matter.  I mean, there's no dispute about the directory not being 
empty on the backup target because there is an unhidden file in it. 
The question is why it should matter that the directory isn't empty, 
given that rdiff-backup normally has no problem with people deleting 
non-empty directories between backups.

I take your point about using a snapshot, but it's not an option in this 
particular instance.  I'll try again with the file excluded and with 
firefox shut down just in case and I'll report to the list if I learn 
anything interesting.

Stephen Isard