[rdiff-backup-users] cron job opens and closes ssh without copying.

[Chris Fanning]

Hello all,

I've got a problem running rdiff-backup as a cron job.

I followed these instructions
http://rdiff-backup.solutionsfirst.com.au/index.php/UnattendedRdiff

Here is my cron tab entry
30 21 * * 1,2,3,4,5 /usr/bin/rdiff-backup -v 9
address@hidden::/home/pas /copies/xen1-bcn/pas

Here is .ssh/authorized_keys2 on the primary machine
command="rdiff-backup --server" ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIw.........

and here is .ssh/config on the mirror machine
host xen1-bcn
       hostname 192.168.172.130
       identityfile /root/.ssh/id_rsa_backup
       compression yes
       cipher blowfish
       protocol 2

the key in mirror /root/.ssh/id_rsa_backup is the same as primary
.ssh/authorized_keys2

The first night this ran, everything got copied ok as I can see in
session_statistics.
StartTime 1149278282.00 (Fri Jun  2 21:58:02 2006)
EndTime 1149406523.93 (Sun Jun  4 09:35:23 2006)
ElapsedTime 128241.93 (35 hours 37 minutes 21.93 seconds)
....
TotalDestinationSizeChange 10161156812 (9.46 GB)
Errors 0

But since then, I am not getting any more session_statistics files or
backup.log or increments or anything.
However, when I run the same command from the command line:
/usr/bin/rdiff-backup -v 9 address@hidden::/home/pas /copies/xen1-bcn/pas
It starts to copy.

So I changed the cron to startup while I'm sitting and xen1-bcn
watching ip traffic and I can see an ssh connection get created, some
data gets exchanged and then it closes.

I thought that might be an auth problem but
#tail auth.log on xen1-bcn says:
Jun  7 09:25:54 xen-bcn1 sshd[13362]: Accepted publickey for root from
192.168.1.5 port 32799 ssh2
Jun  7 09:25:54 xen-bcn1 sshd[13365]: (pam_unix) session opened for
user root by (uid=0)

I've set verbosity at -v 9 hoping to see something else but I can't
find the output in a file anywhere.

This opening and closing of the ssh connection makes me think of auth
problems but it did work the first night, and /var/log/auth is not
reporting errors.

Any help please?
Thanks.
Chris.