backing up data to external hard drive

[slade17]

i just tried a test script to copy a folder in my home directory that previously didnt copy to /mnt/WD/test. I ran the script as root, and everything copied, but i still got the same error messages, and the files that did copy were locked (only root has access). i tried adding the option --chmod=777, but that gave an error message.

...and then after unmounting and remounting, i had access to everything. is that because the drive is a FAT32 partition?

Originally Posted by slade17

i just tried a test script to copy a folder in my home directory that previously didnt copy to /mnt/WD/test.

Is this where you disk is now mounted or still on the local disk?

I ran the script as root, and everything copied, but i still got the same error messages

Which same error message?

i tried adding the option --chmod=777, but that gave an error message.

I believe thats because you are using (correctly IMO) the -a flag, which preserves permissions and ownership.

...and then after unmounting and remounting, i had access to everything. is that because the drive is a FAT32 partition?

Thats why I wanted to see the output of the mount command earlier. Now we won't know what was different.

[slade17]

Originally Posted by pjfg

Is this where you disk is now mounted or still on the local disk?



Which same error message?



I believe thats because you are using (correctly IMO) the -a flag, which preserves permissions and ownership.



Thats why I wanted to see the output of the mount command earlier. Now we won't know what was different.

yes, i remounted the drive under /mnt/WD

and, both messages i posted before, "failed: Operation not permitted (1)" after individual files and rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(892) [sender=2.6.8] at the end of the output from the terminal.

im still confused about what options to use with rsync and what they do. rsync wont work at all without -a, but i don't want to preserve permissions and ownership. ...and the rsync manual page says that -a means archive anyway, and -p preserves permissions; i am not using the -p option.

what exactly are you looking for as far as the mount command is concerned? if i type in something like mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/WD, there is no output, it just mounts the drive.

i edited etc/fstab with the line: /dev/sdc1 /mnt/WD fat32 users,owner,umask=000 0 0

im hoping the section users,owner,umask=000 will solve the problem, but now the drive won't mount at all:

[root@localhost ~]# mount /mnt/WD
mount: unknown filesystem type 'fat32'

the same thing happens if i set the file system type to just "fat"

Look at the rsync man page:

-a is equivalent to -rlptgoD, when means preserve everything and we want recursion.

'mount' by itself, with no options returns a list of mounted file systems along with the current options they were mounted with.

I think you want to mount with 'vfat' (not familiar with using fat volumes) instead of fat32 in your fstab.

[slade17]

 -a, --archive               archive mode; same as -rlptgoD (no -H)

oh, so -a is just combing many options into one; "archive mode" had me confused.

vfat worked, but when i plugged the drive in it just caused more problems. since its a USB hard drive i take it it doesn't have a static point, and this time it showed up as /dev/sdg1, not /dev/sdc1. so in nautilus the drive automounted at /media/WD Passport, and there was a blank mount point /mnt/WD; trying to open that drive just reported that /dev/sdc1 did not exist.

i commented the line out of /etc/fstab that referenced /dev/sdc1, and rebooted; now the drive does not automount, so nothing shows up at all.

before that happened, i was planning to use the option combination -rltDvz --delete

[slade17]

i altered the script to just copy my home directory. the terminal isnt outputting anything, but rsync is using up most of the processor. also, rsync is displayed twice under the "top"command - is that just because i have an smp kernel?

okay, i made a new script to just copy my /home/colin folder to the external drive. running it once produced the same result: it copied two files and a few hidden files, and that was it. then i moved a .iso file into a folder, and ran the script, and it copied more files this time. ....i just realized, theres probably a size limit on fat32 file systems, right? and rsync is just hanging up on the .iso files i have that are too large to fit on a fat32 drive. does anyone know what that size limit is? the file it appears to be hanging on is 4.4 GB. looking at the man page i can use the --max-size=SIZE option.

for some reason, though, rsync still isnt working right. if i run the script twice, it should see that the files are the same and not update them. now if i run it twice it overwrites every file. although on second thought, that could be just because i had to interrupt the transfer, as it was hanging on the .iso.

[the poi]

try just rsyncing a single file of a average size, a couple MB or so, use -avh. Run the command again, see if it works. I think you're right about whats killing the transfer, as fat32 does indeed have a 4gb file limit.

[slade17]

Originally Posted by the poi

try just rsyncing a single file of a average size, a couple MB or so, use -avh. Run the command again, see if it works. I think you're right about whats killing the transfer, as fat32 does indeed have a 4gb file limit.

a test works properly. running the following script the first time everything is copied, the second time rsync goes through the procedure but does not copy anything.

#!/bin/bash

if [ -d /home/colin/rsync/test2 ] ; then

rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /home/colin/rsync/test1 /home/colin/rsync/test2

fi

but when i run the actual script twice, it copies everything a second time.

#!/bin/bash

if [ -d /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora ] ; then

rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /home /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora
rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /root /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora
rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /sbin /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora
rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /bin /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora
rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /boot /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora
rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /etc /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora
rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /lib /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora
rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /usr /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora
rsync -rltuDvz --max-size=4.0GB --delete /var /media/WD?Passport/vaio_fedora

fi