@Kiwy It's a good deduplicating and compressing backup tool, yes.

Also look into borgmatic (a wrapper around borgbackup).

@Kusalananda need your help how to upgrade pip to latest in Fedora 27

@PrabhjotSingh No you don't. I don't use pip or Python at all... As a general answer I would say "use your package manager to upgrade".

Somehow managed to upgrade with sudo --upgrade pip

@Kiwy Yes it is. Restic is newer - that's what @Kusalananda uses. But I think restic does not currently support compression.

They're both deduplicating backups. Those are good.

@FaheemMitha when you go to sleep?

Of course, the software has to be well written and maintained and so forth. And in the long term there are no guarantees about that, unless the software is extremely important, and there is a lot of money riding on it.

@PrabhjotSingh I doubt that you did. sudo does not have a --upgrade flag.

But the lead developer of Borg is a pretty good guy. Of course, there is no guarantee he will be around forever. And he's already put a ton of time into it.

Frankly I don't understand the motivation of free software developers. The real kind, not those who work for corporations (not that there is anything wrong with that).

They must have plenty of spare time, and a very stable job and home life.

Or they really really like free software development.

Which is hard work.

@Kusalananda this was at somewhere on stackexchange.com. this worked now pip version is

@FaheemMitha You've said that exact thing before, about him not going to be around forever. The same thing is true for many projects.

Command was sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade pip

@FaheemMitha I wish I had that much time, I don't understand either. also I'm a terrible coder except in Java which doesn't belong to the futur of code. And I rather drink my own pee than learn javascript and those new fancy dev langage (though javascript in itself isn't new)

@Kusalananda I'm sure I repeat myself. And it's true for any project without significant corporate support.

@Kusalananda I will take a look I'm looking for a tool to backup my nextcloud to a remote safe location

The world is really bad at supporting free software. Take Gmane for example.

I think it partly comes down to having something interesting to work on and tinker with. If other people benefits from it, that's even more of a motivation to continue with it. i

Well, technically that's a service, but it ran on software too.

@Kusalananda It's a ton of work though, and people aren't exactly appreciative.

Often they can be a royal pain to deal with, or so I hear.

So, most people burn out eventually. I wonder if Thomas has any idea who can continue with it if/when he leaves. It seems tactless to ask.

Expectations. You get something for free and you expect it to be perfect, forgetting that it's probably someone's hobby project.

@Kusalananda Exactly.

If he abandons borgbackup, I'm pretty sore someone else will pick it up.

Sure, rather.

@Kusalananda had it not worked, I would have asked you.

@PrabhjotSingh The only thing you should have been aware of is that that command modifies files in various system locations. If you previously had installed pip using a package manager, that package may now be broken, along with dependent packages...

As long as community is there future belongs to open source things.

I understood you. I wrote command without thinking anything. I thought it is on stackexchange it be right. What should I do now

@Kiwy What backup system are you using?

@Kusalananda I hope so.

But often widely used things don't get proper support. It's a shame.

@Kiwy Borg is in Python, I think.

@PrabhjotSingh Note that I said "may". I don't know whether you previously had pip installed as a package. I also don't know if pip3 --upgrade pip overwrites the package files on Fedora (it would do on my OpenBSD system), and I don't know how dependent any dependent packages may be.

@PrabhjotSingh If anything (Python-related) starts behaving strangely, then you at least know what the possible cause may be.

The few times I've used pip, I've used it with the --user flag to only install under my home directory (in ~/.local). I tend to use sudo extremely seldom.

(actually never, but that's only because OpenBSD does not have sudo, it has doas instead).

@FaheemMitha For now, a lot of luck and no backup. But I seriously need to consider

Luck is a bad backup system :-)

Actually, that's a witty name for a backup system...

Indeed it would be very fun to have, I could fork Duplicity just to rename the project and call it Luck

Love the idea

luckbackup () { echo 'Backing up...'; sleep 120; echo 'Done.'; }

@Kusalananda That's pretty much my backup currently... :-/

Gotta work...

backup() { (( $RANDOM % 17 == 0 )) && actually_backup; echo "Backup done."; }

I work in a storage team currently, on the wall there is this very nice peace of paper stating :

That's one of the best analogy I see in real world to the Schrodinger's cat

ah yes. :D That's the fundamental physical reason they always recommend testing backup restoration.

@Kusalananda if anything starts bahaving strea

strangely I'll let you know

@Kiwy I second @Kusalananda's comment. Luck is an extremely bad backup system.

Even a crappy backup system is better than no backup system at all. For years, I just use to rsync some stuff to another computer. Only recently did I start using Borg.

Well, not that recently, perhaps. Speaking of which, the changes to my backup scripts I made last night aren't working properly. Time to investigate.

Hmm, when I run it from the command line, it works.

@FaheemMitha I'm sure I've seen several question about script not working from cron you should consult the site :P

@FaheemMitha Classic ;-)

@Kusalananda Meaning?

@FaheemMitha It's a common problem. The environment for a cronjob is not the same as in an interactive shell.

I have both blank lines and comments in the script. Could that be a problem?

No, probably not. But if the script relies on environment variables, these may be unset if you run through cron.

Intermingled with the code, that is.

@Kusalananda I understand. But it's the same code. I just rearranged it per your switch structure.

How do you execute it in cron?

0 */4 * * *     export HOSTNAME=orwell; /usr/local/bin/backup_local_hourly_remote backup

All on one line. Do I need to put quotes around the command or something?

Ah. Use HOSTNAME=orwell /usr/local/bin/backup_local_hourly_remote backup and see if that works.

@Kusalananda How would it work better this way ? I'm curious

@Kusalananda Ok, but that was working before.

Hmmm.

Why would it make a difference now?

I'm not even sure why HOSTNAME is there, but it must be for some reason.

Aren't you using it in the script?

I don't think borgbackup uses that variable.

@Kusalananda So I am.

I'm not sure why I don't just put that in the script directly.

Neither am I

Does the cronjob fail (with an error)?

@Kusalananda No, it just stops executing.

So it starts, then it terminates early?

@Kusalananda This is what I see in the cron output:

+ set -o pipefail
+ export SERVER=ramnode
+ SERVER=ramnode
+ CLEVEL=zlib,9
+ . /home/faheem/.keychain/orwell-sh
++ SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-IX7qb0BBIiLz/agent.5902
++ export SSH_AUTH_SOCK
++ SSH_AGENT_PID=5903
++ export SSH_AGENT_PID
+ case "$1" in

Could it be that borgbackup is not found in $PATH?

What's the path for its executable?

@Kusalananda /usr/bin/borg

Well, that's a standard path, so that shouldn't be a problem.

And it worked before.

Could you put the script somewhere for me to look at, if possible?

@Kusalananda Sure. One sec.

@Kusalananda gist.github.com/302a5d665c4702cac6605958ae8cdc9a

Hmm... nothing strange there. The comments should not matter to bash (I tested that).

@Kusalananda Debugging suggestions?

You say it works from an interactive shell?

Is bash indifferent to having command sprinkled in between syntax?

@Kusalananda Yes, I just checked that.

@FaheemMitha Mostly.

But that does not appear to be something that would be different between cron and command line.

@FaheemMitha For debugging. Print the value of "$1" before the case statement.

@FaheemMitha No, I agree

@Kusalananda ok

@Kusalananda Oh, I just realised I might not have installed the new crontab.

@FaheemMitha It will print backup when you run in on the command line. And it should print the same when running from cron (I can't see a reason why it shouldn't, but just to be sure).

@FaheemMitha :-)

I have to actually exit from the editor...

I'll know if that was the problem in a few minutes.

@FaheemMitha What is the new crontab entry?

@Kusalananda For testing? Just trying to put it a few minutes ahead. Apparently not far enough ahead, though.

I see

Trying again.

You could also try: env -i /usr/local/bin/backup_local_hourly_remote backup

That would run the script in an empty environment.

@Kusalananda Ok, I'll try that if this doesn't work.

(not quite the same thing as running from cron, but it would hightlight missing environment variables etc.)

Huh, Matthias Klose is uploading Mercurial? Strange.

/usr/local/bin/backup_local_hourly_remote: line 14: syntax error near unexpected token `"$1"'
/usr/local/bin/backup_local_hourly_remote: line 14: `echo "$1"'

I suppose I shouldn't have the quotes?

Though on the shell it works fine, either way.

The line in question is:

echo "$1"

Never mind, it says that clearly.

huh?

@Kusalananda Something unclear?

That's a perfectly valid statement.

oh

You definitely should have the quotes.

@Kusalananda Ok.

Something is really odd.

No, that's an actual syntax error.

Because I'm getting the same thing from the shell. One sec.

Oh, I see. Line 14. That's not before the case statement.

Put it on line 11

I have to leave. We have a couple of MongoDB databases at work that suddenly stopped accepting authenticating users....

@Kusalananda Ok. Thanks for your help.

Does that happen often?

"I'll be back"

@FaheemMitha No, this is as odd as your current issue.

It's one of those days...

@Kusalananda Clearly the Gremlins are out in force.

@FaheemMitha while updating, I'm getting broken pipe kernel error

@Kusalananda Looks like there was nothing with the cron script after all.

I invented a new way to not have cron work - I didn't install the cron script.

@PrabhjotSingh Context?

And better still, the command and error obtained.

Moderately interesting fact. Tracing the Mathematical Geneology of an American mathematician back enough (for no good reason), leads to... Iran.

Sometime in the 12th century.

Su -c 'dnf update:

Error broken pipe kernel 4.16.7fc200

@FaheemMitha What was the error?

@Kusalananda I was talking about @PrabhjotSingh's error, not mine.

@PrabhjotSingh That's the entire error?

@Kusalananda Did you fix your problem?

@FaheemMitha No. The command line clients can't connect, but the Python API can. It's really odd.

@Kusalananda Are you working on it? Or someone else? Or both?

@FaheemMitha Yes

All of the above

Yup

@Kusalananda Well, you get plenty of troubleshooting practice here.

I came across a very strange thing today. When I tried to hibernate machine went to shutdown. But clicking on pause icon hibernates system.

@Kusalananda knows everything.

Even if answer doesn't help, then read carefully this gives you some direction.

When you were discussing about freelance coders, I was thinking look who is praising. You deserve praise for guiding us and sometimes we find hard to mention this in words.

@FaheemMitha Now I remember one of the reasons I switched to restic from borgbackup. It was because with restic, you don't need to have the backup program installed on the backup host.

@Kusalananda That sounds like a good thing, but requiring programs running at both ends isn't an unusual or unreasonable requirement either.

I wonder how restic managed it when borg did not.

@Kusalananda BTW, during your time using borg, did you ever talk to TW?

@FaheemMitha It's unreasonable when the remote system does not even have make installed and I have no admin rights on it.

@FaheemMitha No, I did not.

@Kusalananda Sure.

@Kusalananda Ok, he's a friendly guy, though busy. No idea what his day job is, but it must be quite flexible. And not very long hours.

@FaheemMitha what is read error?

@PrabhjotSingh That means there is an error when trying to read something.

@terdon Views on

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