BackupPC - binary garbage in XferLog.z / XferLog.z getting huge
I run a BackupPC instance that is still on Debian 10 / buster. The latest rsync package for Debian 10 has version number 3.1.3-6.
I recently noticed infrequent issues when backing up hosts that are either on Debian 11 / bullseye, or on Ubuntu 22.04 (which both ship rsync 3.2.3). The symptoms are as follows:
- backups take much longer than usual
- XferLog.z starts "normally", but after a certain point contains a lot of binary garbage, and gets much bigger than usual (hundreds of MB, or even in one case up to 12 GB)
After investigating and looking for information online, I came across these bug reports, which contain the explanation as well as a workaround: Debian Bug report #969463 and BackupPC issue #369.
=> The issue is caused by a combination of a change of default behaviour introduced with rsync 3.2.3, and a bug in File::RsyncP.
The solution that works for me (pending an update to Debian 11 and BackupPC 4) is to add the following line in the individual server config for each of the affected hosts:
I recently noticed infrequent issues when backing up hosts that are either on Debian 11 / bullseye, or on Ubuntu 22.04 (which both ship rsync 3.2.3). The symptoms are as follows:
- backups take much longer than usual
- XferLog.z starts "normally", but after a certain point contains a lot of binary garbage, and gets much bigger than usual (hundreds of MB, or even in one case up to 12 GB)
After investigating and looking for information online, I came across these bug reports, which contain the explanation as well as a workaround: Debian Bug report #969463 and BackupPC issue #369.
=> The issue is caused by a combination of a change of default behaviour introduced with rsync 3.2.3, and a bug in File::RsyncP.
The solution that works for me (pending an update to Debian 11 and BackupPC 4) is to add the following line in the individual server config for each of the affected hosts:
$Conf{RsyncArgsExtra} = ['--no-msgs2stderr'];
