[BackupPC-devel] BackupPC_link does not use $Conf{TopDir}, but uses hardcoded link to /var/lib/backuppc instead

[Dirk De Coninck]

Hi all,

First of all; thanks for making BackupPC available as an Open Source
project.

I am using BackupPC version 3.0.0 from the Ubuntu repositories on Ubuntu
server 8.04.
My system root is on a flash disk and all my data is on a separate raid5
volume so I can suspend the raid drives when they are idle . I had to
change the backuppc location from /var/lib/backuppc to my raid volume
/store/backuppc. I did this by moving the folder and updating the path
in the config file.

At first all seemed to work just fine, backups were running successful,
but I did get error messages "mkdir /var/lib/backuppc: Permission denied
at /usr/share/backuppc/lib/BackupPC/Lib.pm line 741" and I noticed that
the Compression Summary on the host status pages remained empty.

I found out that the cause of this was that BackupPC_link does not use
the $Conf{TopDir} variable for the path, but uses hardcoded link to
/var/lib/backuppc instead. As a workaround, I added a symbolic link from
/var/lib/backuppc to /store/backuppc and all is fine now.

Hopefully it is a quick fix to make BackupPC_link use $Conf{TopDir} and
other users won't be troubled with this.

Where can I find some more information about working with an archive
host? The documentation does address my questions as to how this exactly
works:
Is is just a dump of the entire pc and pool or cpool folder to the
archive host?
Can one have it write a daily archive file to the archive host that can
be moved to tape or DVD (e.g. archive_date.or.sequence.number_.gzip),
and if so will backuppc prompt for the archive file when trying to
restore from the archive host so we know what tape/DVD to feed?

Thanks again for the great product and any help you can offer.

Kind regards,
Dirk.