rdup-simple: backup stops in cp step (at soft cross-device links)

[svenha]

rdup-simple backups stopped working for me because cp -plr returns an error if soft cross-device links are found, e.g. cp: cannot create hard link src/a tgt/a Invalid cross-device link ** rdup-simple: Illegal return code from rdup-simple -L

(This might be related to an OS upgrade from openSUSE 13.1 to openSUSE 13.2 ?)

I changed the return code for a failed cp -plr from 2 to 0 and the backup seems to work again, but this looks like a dangerous hack.

[svenha]

I analyzed the problem on 3 more machines. The issue is triggered by moving from cp version 8.21 to version 8.23 (as found in openSUSE 13.2, Ubuntu 15.04, and other recent distros). I must add that also soft links leading outside the last backup cause rdup-simple to stop with a similar error message:

cp: cannot stat ‘/data/.../file1’: No such file or directory ... ** rdup-simple: Illegal return code from rdup-simple -L

The work-around I suggested above is not perfect because the soft links (like file1 above) will be missing in your backups! Is there a cp option (or similar) that could help here?

[miekg]

[ Quoting [email protected] in "Re: [rdup] rdup-simple: backup stop..." ]

I analyzed the problem on 3 more machines. The issue is triggered by moving from cp version 8.21 to version 8.23 (as found in openSUSE 13.2, Ubuntu 15.04, and other recent distros). I must add that also soft links leading outside the last backup cause rdup-simple to stop with a similar error message:

cp: cannot stat ‘/data/.../file1’: No such file or directory ... ** rdup-simple: Illegal return code from rdup-simple -L

The work-around I suggested above is not perfect because the soft links (like file1 above) will be missing in your backups! Is there a cp option (or similar) that could help here?

I'll try to look into this, but I have some severe time constrants as I'm mostly working on other projects...

[llongi]

I've encountered the same after an upgrade from coreutils 8.21 to 8.23. I've managed to track it down to the following change in coreutils 8.22: "cp --link now dereferences a symbolic link as source before creating the hard link in the destination unless the -P,--no-deref option is specified. Previously, it would create a hard link of the symbolic link, even when the dereferencing options -L or -H were specified." (https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=7815) So I tried adding the -P option to the cp call in rdup-simple, and that seems to have fixed it. I hope this helps, Luca.

[svenha]

I assume that most machines now have a coreutils version that is affected by this issue. Why not change rdup-simple as discussed?