Re: Eliminating Old "WARNING: UpdateError: ... File changed..." Messages

[EricZolf]

Hi Art,

I'm absolutely sorry but it looks like your e-mail never got answered. I 
can't remember having seen it before.

On 27/09/2023 14:27, Art Zemon wrote:
> I am backing up from a Linux box running rdiff-backup 2.2.2 to a Synology
> NAS running NFS. Before I started using the --no-eas flag, I created a
> bunch of problems. When I run a backup, I get a bunch of warnings like
> these:
>
> WARNING: UpdateError: '/nfs/dumbo-art/tippy/home/art
> /Pictures/vlcsnap-2023-03-05-07h13m38s772.png' File changed from regular
> file before signature
> WARNING: UpdateError:
> '/nfs/dumbo-art/tippy/home/art/pictures/2023/sp2m/2023-05-29/2023-05-29_11-10-41.jpg'
> File changed from regular file before signature
>
> Looking in the destination directory, I see lots of admin conflict
> directors, such as
>
> .../home/art/Pictures_ADMIN_Sep-22-224512-2023_Conflict
>
> and files such as
>
> .../home/art/
> pictures/2023/sp2m/2023-05-29/2023-05-29_11-10-41_ADMIN_Jul-20-225412-2023_Conflict.jpg
>
> How do I get rid of these old warnings, just remove all of the old admin
> conflict directories and files?

I'm not sure what those `_Conflict` files are, it's not a pattern used 
in any way or form by rdiff-backup, so it must come from some other 
element of your stack, perhaps Synology itself [1]?

> These are all old warnings. I am not getting any new ones.

Where do you continue to see those old warnings? And why do you care, as 
they are old ones? As for the reason for the old warnings, NFS only 
supports extended attributes (EAs) as an _optional_ feature [2], so 
"here be dragons" I guess. Using the `--no-eas` option was probably the 
safe choice. Another approach would be to install rdiff-backup directly 
on the synology and use SSH to remotely backup your data, skipping the 
NFS layer altogether; I have no Synology but I think others have gone 
this path.

Anyway the "File changed before signature" warning only tells you that 
the file was skipped because it changed during the backup, so all should 
be fine if you've now got rid of this old error.

Hope this helps, sorry for the delay,
Eric

[1] 
https://kb.synology.com/en-us/DSM/tutorial/Synology_Drive_file_conflict_resolution
[2] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8276