"New" permissions handling in 1.2.0 causes re-backup of files that haven't changed

[kosal75]

I have just updated from 1.1.24 to 1.2.0 (common, gnome, qt4), and making a snapshot takes hours. When downgrading to 1.1.24, all is normal (5-6 minutes, as always).

Ubuntu 18.10 with kernel 4.18.0-18.

[ghost]

Hi Germar, hope all is good! 😀
Like @kosal75 I too got updated today, and ran into many issues. These were:

• My previous snapshots (over 2 years worth) were no longer "considered". Although they were visible in the BiT-GUI, a new update triggered a completely new "virgin" rsync of all files on all disks defined previously (see below), whether changed, new or not.
• Having said that, $HOME/.config/backintime/config was found and recognised though and executed without errors, i.e. only files/ dirs defined in $HOME/.config/backintime/config previously were backup-ed.
• As @kosal75 writes, the rsync is extremely slow. With my backup disk on a type C connection, write speeds are below < 1MB/s. Normally (and after downgrade) I get > 200 MB/s.
• After the BiT/ rsync has been running for a while, my backup disk is unmounted autonomously. As a result BiT, which still runs, throws endless error notifications.

I too downgraded to one version lower available on my ppa:
sudo apt install backintime-qt4=1.1.12-2 backintime-common=1.1.12-2 backintime-gnome=1.1.12-2
sudo apt-mark hold backintime-common backintime-qt4 backintime-gnome

After this, peace and quiet has returned, all is good, and BiT performs with its previous accuracy, speed, and without flaws.

FYI: currently I'm on Xubuntu 18.04 LTS HWE (kernel 4.18.0-18).

Hope this helps...

[kosal75]

I have found one more issue after downgrading: the cron settings were completely reset by 1.2.0. -- Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S7

…

On 2019. április 28. 20:04:49 BelladonnavGFH ***@***.***> wrote: Hi Germar, hope all is good! Like @kosal75 I too got updated today, and ran into many issues. These were: My previous snapshots (over 2 years worth) were no longer recognised/ found. Although they were visible in the BiT-GUI, a new update triggered a new "virgin" rsync of all files on all disks. Having said that, $HOME/.config/backintime/config was found and recognised though and executed without errors. As @kosal75 writes, the rsync is extremely slow. With my backup disk on a type C connection, write speeds are blow < 1MB/s After the BiT/ rsync has been running for a while, my backup disk is unmounted. As a result BiT throws endless notification errors. I too downgraded to one version lower available on my ppa: sudo apt install backintime-qt4=1.1.12-2 backintime-common=1.1.12-2 backintime-gnome=1.1.12-2 sudo apt-mark hold backintime-common backintime-qt4 backintime-gnome After this, all is good, and BiT performs with its previous accuracy, speed, and without flaws. FYI: currently I'm on Xubuntu 18.04 LTS HWE (kernel 4.18.0-18). Hope this helps... — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[pehlm]

Thanks @BelladonnavGFH for your tip! I haven't tried to do a backup with 1.2.0 and cannot say anything about the slowness, but the old backups wasn't, as you said, recognized any longer and I panicked. I'm also on Xubuntu 18.04 and it wasn't even possible to rezise the window, it was super big! Not possible to get it smaller.
Thanks to you I have it working again. Even if I was forced to get an older version 1.1.12, the version before 1.2.0 was 1.1.24.
To the developers: I'm hoping you can get the new version to work, Back In Time is an extremely good backup-program!

[ghost]

No thanks @pehlm. If it now works for you, perfect!
As a clarification: if 1.1.24 works for you, don't let me stop you using that one. The only reason I went to 1.1.12 is because that is the only version available on the ppa(s) I use(next to 1.2.0 that is of course). And as you mention, I assume this is only a temp thing, hoping to upgrade when the issues are resolved. Because, yes, I agree, BiT is very good...

[hannes101]

I can confirm the slow backup, although all my backups were found and no full backup was done. Although looking at the logs I was able to see that apparently there were many files backuped, which actually didn't change.

[catmatist]

In the Ubuntu bionic ppa for bit "stable", when bit 1.2 was added, 1.1.24 was removed. Can it be put back, please? There were many bugs fixed between the version in the official Ubuntu repositories (1.1.12?) and 1.1.24, which is why I was using the ppa. I was fortunate enough to see the change coming before it was applied, and disabled the ppa in order to keep the version I've been using until I have time to figure out if 1.2 will work for me. Which will take a lot longer if I have no easy way to get back to 1.1.24 on a system that I try 1.2 on. Thank you for working on this very useful software.

[jns-]

After updating to 1.2.0 BiT does a (nearly) full backup because file permissions are handled differently. Before 1.2.0 all destination file permissions were set to -rw-r--r--. In 1.2.0 rsync is executed with --perms option which tells rsync to preserve the source file permission. That's why so many files seem to be changed.

[colinl]

@jns is it actually backing them up again (and consuming extra disc space) or is it just changing the file permissions, which takes time but does not use any extra disc space?

[jns-]

I think it's backing up the files again. My last (and first 1.2.0) backup took roughly 1 hour and created a snapshot [WITH ERRORS]. However, no error messages were written to the log file. After deleting that snapshot disk usage dropped from 35% to 19% (~300G). Unfortunately I did not check file inodes before deleting that snapshot. Considering the amount of freed disk space, I assume BiT made a complete backup, except files where permissions matched -rw-r--r--.

[catmatist]

In 1.1.24 (and I don't know how many earlier versions), there is a per-profile setting for "Full rsync mode". If you turned it on, it copied permissions to the backup directory with rsync instead of saving them in a file. I think I saw a change log comment somewhere that said 1.2 dropped support for the previous default mode and only supports "Full rsync mode". I wonder if the transition is smoother for backups that were already using "Full rsync mode"? Is there any documentation anywhere on how to make the switch to the new version without tears?

[Germar]

Hey all,
sorry for the inconvenience with version 1.2

Like @jns- already pointed out, BiT will now let rsync change the permissions directly in the snapshot. At the first snapshot with the new version this will make rsync calculate checksums for all source and all snapshot files to make sure, they are definitely the same. Which of course takes a long time. Normally rsync only compares modification-time, size and permission to tell if a file has changed. With the next snapshot rsync should be fast as before or even faster because of the optimized code.

To confirm you could compare the inodes of files that didn't change. Take a look at this FAQ: How can I check if my snapshots are incremental (using hard-links)?

Also you can check the infos rsync provides for each file it processed. From man rsync:

The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows:

o      A  c means either that a regular file has a different checksum
       (requires --checksum) or that a symlink,  device,  or  special
       file  has a changed value.  Note that if you are sending files
       to an rsync prior to 3.0.1, this change flag will  be  present
       only for checksum-differing regular files.

o      A  s means the size of a regular file is different and will be
       updated by the file transfer.

o      A t means the modification time  is  different  and  is  being
       updated  to  the sender’s value (requires --times).  An alter‐
       nate value of T means that the modification time will  be  set
       to the transfer time, which happens when a file/symlink/device
       is updated without --times and when a symlink is  changed  and
       the  receiver  can’t set its time.  (Note: when using an rsync
       3.0.0 client, you might see the s flag combined with t instead
       of the proper T flag for this time-setting failure.)

o      A  p means the permissions are different and are being updated
       to the sender’s value (requires --perms).

o      An o means the owner is different and is being updated to  the
       sender’s value (requires --owner and super-user privileges).

o      A  g  means the group is different and is being updated to the
       sender’s value (requires --group and the authority to set  the
       group).

o      The u slot is reserved for future use.

o      The a means that the ACL information changed.

o      The x means that the extended attribute information changed.

If you have lots of files that didn't change but are marked with c this could indicate a failing harddrive. You should run fsck and consider replacing the drive.

[kosal75]

And what happens on a drive not supporting Linux file permissions? I also use samba mount. -- Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S7

…

On 2019. május 2. 20:29:38 Germar Reitze ***@***.***> wrote: Hey all, sorry for the inconvenience with version 1.2Like @jns- already pointed out, BiT will now let rsync change the permissions directly in the snapshot. At the first snapshot with the new version this will make rsync calculate checksums for all source and all snapshot files to make sure, they are definitely the same. Which of course takes a long time. Normally rsync only compares modification-time, size and permission to tell if a file has changed. With the next snapshot rsync should be fast as before or even faster because of the optimized code. To confirm you could compare the inodes of files that didn't change. Take a look at this FAQ: How can I check if my snapshots are incremental (using hard-links)? Also you can check the infos rsync provides for each file it processed. From man rsync: The attribute that is associated with each letter is as follows: o A c means either that a regular file has a different checksum (requires --checksum) or that a symlink, device, or special file has a changed value. Note that if you are sending files to an rsync prior to 3.0.1, this change flag will be present only for checksum-differing regular files. o A s means the size of a regular file is different and will be updated by the file transfer. o A t means the modification time is different and is being updated to the sender’s value (requires --times). An alter‐ nate value of T means that the modification time will be set to the transfer time, which happens when a file/symlink/device is updated without --times and when a symlink is changed and the receiver can’t set its time. (Note: when using an rsync 3.0.0 client, you might see the s flag combined with t instead of the proper T flag for this time-setting failure.) o A p means the permissions are different and are being updated to the sender’s value (requires --perms). o An o means the owner is different and is being updated to the sender’s value (requires --owner and super-user privileges). o A g means the group is different and is being updated to the sender’s value (requires --group and the authority to set the group). o The u slot is reserved for future use. o The a means that the ACL information changed. o The x means that the extended attribute information changed. If you have lots of files that didn't change but are marked with c this could indicate a failing harddrive. You should run fsck and consider replacing the drive. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[colinl]

@Germar I just ran a test on Ubuntu 18.04 backing up to local drive. I created a new backup with version 1.1.24 on default settings then upgraded (via the bit team stable ppa) to 1.2.0 and ran another backup. In the log this showed every file with [C] cf...p..... and the size of the backup doubled (measured with ncdu and inode values checked just to be sure). I am not sure from your previous post whether that is expected or not.

[Germar]

And what happens on a drive not supporting Linux file permissions?

BiT still stores permissions inside the fileinfo.bz2 like in previous versions

[Germar]

In the log this showed every file with [C] cf...p..... and the size of the backup doubled (measured with ncdu and inode values checked just to be sure). I am not sure from your previous post whether that is expected or not.

No, thats not expected. Please hang on, I need to test this. Will take a bit as I need to prepare a test VM first which is an Ubuntu 16.04 updated to 18.04. Otherwise I'm not able to install 1.1.24 in 18.04

[Germar]

Hmmm

$ mkdir src dst1 dst2 dst3
$ cp backintime-1.1.24/CHANGES src/
$ rsync --no-p -t -r -v -i src/ dst1/
sending incremental file list
.d..t...... ./
>f+++++++++ CHANGES

sent 39,299 bytes  received 38 bytes  78,674.00 bytes/sec
total size is 39,185  speedup is 1.00
$ rsync --no-p -t -r -v -i src/ dst2/ --link-dest=../dst1/
sending incremental file list
.d..t...... ./

sent 63 bytes  received 19 bytes  164.00 bytes/sec
total size is 39,185  speedup is 477.87
$ rsync -p -t -r -v -i src/ dst3/ --link-dest=../dst2/
sending incremental file list
.d..t...... ./

sent 67 bytes  received 19 bytes  172.00 bytes/sec
total size is 39,185  speedup is 455.64
$ 

All fine so far. But this is stange:

$ mkdir src dst1 dst2 dst3
$ # copy the same file as before into src but this time using nautilus
$ rsync --no-p -t -r -v -i src/ dst1/
sending incremental file list
.d..t...... ./
>f+++++++++ CHANGES

sent 39,301 bytes  received 38 bytes  78,678.00 bytes/sec
total size is 39,185  speedup is 1.00
$ rsync --no-p -t -r -v -i src/ dst2/ --link-dest=../dst1/
sending incremental file list
.d..t...... ./

sent 69 bytes  received 19 bytes  176.00 bytes/sec
total size is 39,185  speedup is 445.28
$ rsync -p -t -r -v -i src/ dst3/ --link-dest=../dst2/
sending incremental file list
.d..t...... ./
cf...p..... CHANGES     <<<----- this is, what actually happens

sent 72 bytes  received 22 bytes  188.00 bytes/sec
total size is 39,185  speedup is 416.86
$ 

EDIT: removed the last part as it was wrong...

[jns-]

No, enabling Preserve ACL makes no difference in my case. Disk usage increases rapidly.

Investigating a random file that did not change since 2017:

BiT last log entry

[I] Take snapshot (rsync: BACKINTIME: cf...p..... home/user/out.log)

[C] cf...p..... home/user/out.log

Running

$ stat /backuppath/backintime/MACHINE/user/1/*/backup/home/user/out.log

results [truncated]

  File: '/backuppath/backintime/MACHINE/user/1/20190430-071835-513/backup/home/user/out.log'
  Size: 1124      	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: fc00h/64512d	Inode: 83624689    Links: 25
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: ( 1000/     jns)   Gid: ( 1000/     jns)
Access: 2019-05-03 07:23:28.065557278 +0200
Modify: 2017-10-04 09:11:08.408810922 +0200
Change: 2019-05-01 13:48:55.184458078 +0200
 Birth: -
  File: '/backuppath/backintime/MACHINE/user/1/last_snapshot/backup/home/user/out.log'
  Size: 1124      	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: fc00h/64512d	Inode: 83624689    Links: 25
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: ( 1000/     jns)   Gid: ( 1000/     jns)
Access: 2019-05-03 07:23:28.065557278 +0200
Modify: 2017-10-04 09:11:08.408810922 +0200
Change: 2019-05-01 13:48:55.184458078 +0200
 Birth: -
  File: '/backuppath/backintime/MACHINE/user/1/new_snapshot/backup/home/user/out.log'
  Size: 1124      	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: fc00h/64512d	Inode: 83758208    Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--)  Uid: ( 1000/     jns)   Gid: ( 1000/     jns)
Access: 2019-05-03 07:23:28.065557278 +0200
Modify: 2017-10-04 09:11:08.408810922 +0200
Change: 2019-05-03 07:23:28.065557278 +0200
 Birth: -

Inode of that file is 83624689 for all past snapshots and changes to 83758208 in new_snapshot.
As I mentioned before the problem seems to be the destination permissions set to (0644/-rw-r--r--) for pre 1.2.0 snapshots and setting it to the actual source file permission (0664/-rw-rw-r--) in 1.2.0 snapshots.

[jns-]

What brought me back to business is following:
I changed permissions of files in the last_snapshot folder to match source file settings by extracting that information from fileinfo.bz2. After that backing up with 1.2.0 onto a <1.2.0 snapshot was blazingly fast and no considerable disk space was used.

I do not yet know if this procedure creates any regrettable side effects!

[ghost]

@jns- Whaa! You lost me there... What exactly did you do? If I take a look at fileinfo.bz2 I see:
33188 bella bella /media/bella/TikiStorage/foo.jpg
So what exactly did you do now? Did you change it in fileinfo.bz2, or did you change the permissions of the files themselves in last_snapshot? And if you did the latter, I assume you didn't do this by hand, one by one? Please tell, would love to try it myself in a VM...

[Germar]

No, enabling Preserve ACL makes no difference in my case. Disk usage increases rapidly.

Ja, I realized my mistake after laying my head on the pillow last night. So I turned out again and deleted the last part of my comment 😆 Today I'd say you should rather ignore my last post at all 🙈

I did some further testing which now shows the root of the problem:

$ mkdir src dst1
$ echo "bar" > src/foo
$ cp -al src/foo dst1/foo
$ ls -lai src/foo dst1/foo
6183473 -rw-r--r-- 2 germar germar 4 Mai  3 22:36 dst1/foo
6183473 -rw-r--r-- 2 germar germar 4 Mai  3 22:36 src/foo
$ chmod 664 src/foo 
$ ls -lai src/foo dst1/foo
6183473 -rw-rw-r-- 2 germar germar 4 Mai  3 22:36 dst1/foo
6183473 -rw-rw-r-- 2 germar germar 4 Mai  3 22:36 src/foo
$ 

So, changing permissions of one hard-link will change permissions in all hard-links. Which, after knowing the fact, is totally logical because a hard-link is just a pointer to the inode. It doesn't store anything else. Not even permissions.
And that's why rsync creates a new inode even if there was just a change in permissions...

[jns-]

In my previous posts I used the term 'pre 1.2.0' for BiT versions older than 1.2.0. From now on let's assume it was version 1.1.4 for the sake of better readability.

My intention was to prevent BiT 1.2.0 to create a full backup on top of my 1.1.4 snapshot history. The idea was to modify the 1.1.4 snapshot history outside of BiT and make it look ok to BiT 1.2.0 next time it is started.

Like @Germar explains, hard links are just pointers to files on the disk and do not store any additional information. Permissions are part of the file the hard link is pointing to.

BiT crates a snapshot folder called last_snapshot. From that folder the latest version of all backup files can be accessed (via hard links), no matter in what snapshot the files were written to the disk. The original source file permissions are stored in fileinfo.bz2 for every snapshot taken. The permissions are somewhat hidden in the first number on each line.

For example in

33204 user group /home/user/file.txt

33204 in octal representation is 100664. The last 3 digits represent the original file permission, which corresponds to -rw-rw-r--. All we have to do is to grab those last 3 digits and chmod 664 /bit_backup_path/last_snapshot/backup/home/user/file.txt. After that the backed up file has the same permissions like its source file and BiT 1.2.0 no longer thinks it needs backing it up again.

What I did in detail:

1. Be very careful and consider backing up your backup files. That should be done with something like
   rsync -a -H --delete --progress /bit_backup/ /backup_of_bit_backup/
-H is important to preserve the BiT hard link structure.

2. Start BiT and delete all snapshots created with BiT 1.2.0. Quit BiT. Now you have a 'clean' 1.1.4 snapshot history.

3. Decompress fileinfo.bz2 from last_snapshot folder to fileinfo.txt and put that file into your home directory.

4. Now, modify all permissions of files in in last_snapshot according to information grabbed from fileinfo.bz2.

5. Start BiT 1.2.0 and take a snapshot. It should now create a regular incremental snapshot.

I used

cat fileinfo.txt | while read line; do perm=`echo "${line}" | cut -d" " -f1`; path_=`echo ${line} | cut -d" " -f4-`; perm=$(([##8]perm)); perm="${perm:$((${#perm}-3)):3}"; echo chmod "$perm" "/bit_backup_path/last_snapshot/backup$path_"; done

for step 4. (works in Z shell, probably not in bash). The last echo before chmod has to be removed to effectively change file permissions. Otherwise the command is just echoed to your console.

I recommend to test permission modification first on a subset of backup files by truncating fileinfo.txt. Probably you can find some useless files in your backups to experiment with, for example .Fonts folder in your home directory or similar.

Running the one liner may take some time (~350GB corresponding to 200k files, took ~15min on my laptop). Optimize it according to your needs and show us something way more elegand 😏

Note 1: As I mentioned in a post above, I do not know if there are any side effects.

Note 2: This procedure does not clean up your complete snapshot history. It only affects the latest version of your backup files. If you restore a file from far in the past the permissions will most probably be wrong.

[colinl]

@jns I can confirm that procedure works for me on Ubuntu, thanks. I had to first install zsh to run it (which is no big deal), it would be nice if someone more knowledgeable that myself could do an sh or bash version in order to avoid this necessity. I can suggest a slight enhancement which avoids manually unpacking the file. The procedure is:
Ensure bzip2 is installed (sudo apt-get install bzip2)
Ensure zsh is installed (sudo apt-get install zsh)
Run zsh from a terminal then

cd path/to/backups/last_snapshot
cat fileinfo.bz2 | bzip2 -d | while read line; do perm=`echo "${line}" | cut -d" " -f1`; path_=`echo ${line} | cut -d" " -f4-`; perm=$(([##8]perm)); perm="${perm:$((${#perm}-3)):3}"; echo chmod "$perm" "backup$path_"; done

As with @jns's version that will just echo all the commands it will perform, once happy that looks correct then repeat the command but without the last echo so

cat fileinfo.bz2 | bzip2 -d | while read line; do perm=`echo "${line}" | cut -d" " -f1`; path_=`echo ${line} | cut -d" " -f4-`; perm=$(([##8]perm)); perm="${perm:$((${#perm}-3)):3}"; chmod "$perm" "backup$path_"; done

You can do that by hitting up arrow then left arrow to the echo text and delete the word echo.

[ghost]

Thanks @jns- and @colinl for sharing this! I'm sure I'll give it a try too (as soon as I can get these pesky little humans squatting my box to play SuperTuxKart to go away).

[Germar]

Thanks @jns- and @colinl for the fix. I'm planing to implement this to run automatically. But as I'm on vacation for the next weeks this will take some time...

If you restore a file from far in the past the permissions will most probably be wrong.

BiT will still restore permissions from fileinfo.bz2 after restore. So permissions will be correct no matter how old the snapshot was.

[wiregrasscoder]

Building on the work of @jns- and @colinl, I added user and group. For my last 1.1.4 backup, this was necessary to prevent another full backup.

cat fileinfo.bz2 | bzip2 -d | while read line; do perm=`echo "${line}" | cut -d" " -f1`; path_=`echo ${line} | cut -d" " -f4-`; user_=`echo "${line}" | cut -d" " -f2`; group_=`echo "${line}" | cut -d" " -f3`;  perm=$(([##8]perm)); perm="${perm:$((${#perm}-3)):3}"; chmod "$perm" "backup$path_"; chown "$user_":"$group_" "backup$path_"; done

[wiregrasscoder]

Upon further review, something is wonky beyond just correcting the permissions, owners, and groups in the last good 1.1.4 snapshot. I've gone through by hand and confirmed that the permissions, owners, and groups in my source files are identical to those files in last_snapshot, but nonetheless, some files continue to be backed up in full (files that haven't changed in years). Running the above command did prevent many of the files from being backed up in full again, but it was not a panacea.

[colinl]

@wiregrasscoder Do the problematic files have unusual permissions in the source? I am seeing it with r--r--r--. If so perhaps you are falling over issue #994
I would also be interested in knowing whether anyone else is seeing issue #993. I find that if a delete a file and make a snapshot that it does not delete the file from the snapshot.

[wiregrasscoder]

@colinl I have not seen the r--r--r-- issue. The permissions on the files in my scenario do have setuid and setgid applied. Also I'm also seeing that after a certain point during the snapshot, the snapshot size begins to grow very quickly, and log entries stop, so I'm not sure what's happening.

[Cyber1000]

Hi, same problem here: updated from 1.1.24 to 1.2.0.
My config file contains "profile1.snapshots.preserve_acl=false" as stated in example-config https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/blob/master/common/config-example-local
Is this still used with 1.2.0?

In https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/blob/master/common/tools.py I found a no_perms flag, how can I use this, is this something I could write in my config?
profile1.snapshots.no_perms=false (not tested, just a first guess)?

Would the behaviour of 1.2.0 with this config-entry be the same as with pre 1.2.0 (without groups, users, perms).

It would be fine for me to have permissions not synced.

Thanks!

[aryoda]

did you contacted Wayne about our issues? And did you point him to his own upstream bug?

Not yet, I have just sent a public request at the rsync mailing list (but no developer responded so far)
and have then bumped the issue by adding my script to reproduce the bug (also no response so far).

Second question: Would it solve our problems if the upstream bug would be fixed?

As @emtiu wrote: Not reliably. Furthermore it does not fix things I have just added in my above analysis:
-> Permission mappings in the mount options cause permanent re-backups (very in-transparent to the end user!).

The only point that makes me a little nervous is the handling of existing backups. We need to be very thorough in testing that. But I think that's within our capabilities.

Yes, it needs testing, but it is a direct "downgrade" (= does no longer treat permissions changes as a change) so it seems much less risky than keeping the new permissions handling.

[emtiu]

I vote to undo the new permission handling (--perms --groups --owner --executability options) introduced in BiT v1.2.0 to get rid of major issues related to this change:

How about someone create an experimental branch that implements this fix/revert? It would be very useful for testing, and we're going to need a lot of testing :)

[aryoda]

How about someone create an experimental branch that implements this fix/revert?

I think I can do this but I need some time (I guess until end of October - I am in the middle of another major roll-out)

It would be very useful for testing

We need a test plan for that with a matrix of backup and restore scenarios:

• With- and without existing snapshots
• Existing snapshots with old or new permission handling
• New snapshots with old or new permission handling
• Different file systems and mount options
• With and without ssh
• Different UIDs and GIDs between source and target mounts (for backups as well as restores)
• ...

We then should automate these tests

• simulated changes of source data files with a backup in each step
• restore to check if the permissions and owner are kept as expected

Eg. my MRE bash script test.sh does this just to reproduce the rsync bug and could be used as a basis for test automation (or any other scripting language).

[emtiu]

• With- and without existing snapshots
• Existing snapshots with old or new permission handling
• New snapshots with old or new permission handling

I would even go so far as to do some tests with real, large datasets on real hard-drives. Some problems you only notice in "real world" scenarios. I have plenty of large external drives lying around to do that :)

[buhtz]

I fully agree that we should do heave real-world testing here.
Of course I'll support it when the time comes.

[aryoda]

I think we could automate testing of the snapshot source and target folders quite "easily" (not only for this issue) similar to how the rsync test suites work:

https://github.com/WayneD/rsync/blob/2f9b963abaa52e44891180fe6c0d1c2219f6686d/testsuite/rsync.fns#L247

It basically uses diff to compare

• the directory listings
• and files in the directory (diff -r)

[buhtz]

F***ing awesome! 🥳 🎉 🪅 Never realized that rsync itself could have a test suite. This is a very good "documentation" of its behavior.
I see light at the end of the tunnel... 🌞

[ACAwebbuilder]

Hi! I found this bug while trying to find a solution to an issue I am having with BiT 1.2.1. I upgraded my system from Ubuntu 18.04 to Ubuntu Server 22.04. I then installed BiT 1.2.1 (which was an upgrade for me). I ran the initial scan and it went well. Since then, it is running a full scan frequently (not every time, but most times). The previous version just updated what had changed.

Is this happening because the bug wasn't fixed before this update? Or is there possibly something else going on?

Thank you for any thoughts/suggestions.

[buhtz]

No one is assigned to this Issue. So before acting on it I vote to move it into "2nd release from now" milestone.

[Ronkn]

So what's the deal with this? Is it an issue or is it intentional? The read me says the first backup takes a while but from what I can tell this "issue" is intentional?

Just trying to figure out if action will be taken on resolving this, or if I should hold back package updates on this to keep it below 1.2.0.

[emtiu]

This behavior is not intentional, it's an unfortunate consequence of a complex set of circumstances that involve backintime, rsync, and filesystem permissions.

We would love to fix it, but the possible solutions outlined here all have serious drawbacks. Above all, there's lots of users with different configurations and existing backups out there, and we need to make sure we don't break their stuff.

For the moment, with its limited resources, the team has been undecided on how to proceed. Meanwhile, a workaround exists by manually adding --no-perms --no-group --no-owner to the rsync options.