### Table of contents

1. When I try to run rdiff-backup it says "ImportError: No module named __future__" or "SyntaxError: invalid syntax". What's happening?
2. What do the different verbosity levels mean?
3. Does rdiff-backup run under Windows?
4. My backup set contains some files that I just realized I don't want/need backed up. How do I remove them from the backup volume to save space?
5. How do I install the RPMs on Redhat linux system?
6. Does rdiff-backup work under Solaris?
7. How fast is rdiff-backup? Can it be run on large data sets?

### Questions and Answers

1. When I try to run rdiff-backup it says "ImportError: No module named __future__" or "SyntaxError: invalid syntax". What's happening?

   rdiff-backup versions 0.2.x require Python version 2.1 or later, and versions 0.3.x and later require Python version 2.2 or later. If you don't know what version of python you are running, type in "python -V" from the shell. I'm sorry if this is inconvenient, but rdiff-backup uses generators, iterators, nested scoping, and static/class methods extensively, and these were only added in version 2.2.

   If you have two versions of python installed, and running "python" defaults to an early version, you'll probably have to change the first line of the rdiff-backup script. For instance, you could set it to:

       #!/usr/bin/env python2.2

2. What do the different verbosity levels mean?

   There is no formal specification, but here is a rough description (settings are always cumulative, so 5 displays everything 4 does):

   0 | No information given
   1 | Fatal Errors displayed
   2 | Warnings
   3 | Important messages, and maybe later some global statistics (default)
   4 | Some global settings, miscellaneous messages
   5 | Mentions which files were changed
   6 | More information on each file processed
   7 | More information on various things
   8 | All logging is dated
   9 | Details on which objects are moving across the connection

3. Does rdiff-backup run under Windows?

   Yes, apparently it is possible. First, follow Jason Piterak's instructions:

       Subject: Cygwin rdiff-backup
       From: Jason  Piterak <Jason_Piterak@c-i-s.com>
       Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 16:54:24 -0500 (13:54 PST)
       To: rdiff-backup@keywest.Stanford.EDU

       Hello all,
         On a lark, I thought I would attempt to get rdiff-backup to work under
       Windows98 under Cygwin. We have a number of NT/Win2K servers in the field
       that I'd love to be backing up via rdiff-backup, and this was the start of
       getting that working.

       SUMMARY:
         o You can get all the pieces for rdiff-backup working under Cygwin.
         o The backup process works up to the point of writing any files with
       timestamps.
             ... This is because the ':' character is reserved for Alternate Data
       Stream (ADS) file designations under NTFS.

       HOW TO GET IT WORKING (to a point, anyway):
         o Install Cygwin
         o Download the Python 2.2 update through the Cygwin installer and install.
         o Download the librsync libraries from the usual place, but before
       compiling...
         o Cygwin does not use/provide glibc. Because of this, you have to repoint
       some header files in the Makefile:

          -- Make sure that you have /usr/include/inttypes.h
             redirected to /usr/include/sys/types.h. Do this by:

             create a file /usr/include/inttypes.h with the contents:
             #include <sys/types.h>
         o Put rdiff-backup in your PATH, as you normally would.

   Then, whenever you use rdiff-backup (or at least if you are backing up to or restoring from a Windows system), use the --windows-time-format switch, which will tell rdiff-backup not to put a colon (":") in a filename (this option was added after Jason posted his message). Finally, as Michael Muegel points out, you have to exclude all files from the source directory which have colons in them, so add something like the --exclude ".*:.*" option. In the near future some quoting facility may be added to deal with these issues.

4. My backup set contains some files that I just realized I don't want/need backed up. How do I remove them from the backup volume to save space?

   Let's take an example. Suppose you ran

       rdiff-backup /usr /backup

   and now realize that you don't want /usr/local backed up on /backup. Next time you back up, you run

       rdiff-backup --exclude /usr/local /usr /backup

   so that /usr/local is no longer copied to /backup/usr/local. However, old information about /usr/local is still present in /backup/rdiff-backup-data/increments/usr/local. You could wait for this information to expire and then run rdiff-backup with the --remove-older-than option, or you could remove the increments manually by typing:

       rm -rf /backup/rdiff-backup-data/increments/usr/local
       rm /backup/rdiff-backup-data/increments/usr/local.*.dir

5. How do I install the RPMs on a Redhat linux system?

   The problem is that the default version of python for Redhat 7.x is 1.5.x, and rdiff-backup requires python >= 2.2. Redhat/rawhide provides python 2.2 RPMs, but they are packaged under the "python2" name.

   So, if you are running Redhat 7.x:

   1. Make sure the python2 >= 2.2 package is installed, leaving python 1.5 the way it is
   2. Install the rdiff-backup RPM, using --nodeps if it only complains about python 2.2 missing.
   3. Edit the first line of /usr/bin/rdiff-backup so it says

          #!/usr/bin/env python2

      so "python2" gets run instead of "python".

   You can also upgrade using a non-Redhat python 2.2 RPM and avoid the above steps (this is what I did). Because of all the dependencies it is usually easier to use source RPMs for this.

6. Does rdiff-backup work under Solaris?

   There may be a problem with rdiff-backup and Solaris' libthread. Adding "ulimit -n unlimited" may fix the problem though. Here is a post by Kevin Spicer on the subject:

       Subject: RE: Crash report....still not^H^H^H working
       From: "Spicer, Kevin"
       Date: Sat, 11 May 2002 23:36:42 +0100
       To: rdiff-backup@keywest.Stanford.EDU

       Quick mail to follow up on this..
       My rdiff backup (on Solaris 2.6 if you remember) has now worked
       reliably for nearly two weeks after I added...

           ulimit -n unlimited

       to the start of my cron job and created a wrapper script on the remote
       machine which looked like this...

           #!/bin/sh
           ulimit -n unlimited
           rdiff-backup --server
           exit

       And changed the remote schema on the command line of rdiff-backup to
       call the wrapper script rather than rdiff-backup itself on the remote
       machine.  As for the /dev/zero thing I've done a bit of Googleing and
       it seems that /dev/zero is used internally by libthread on Solaris
       (which doesn't really explain why its opening more than 64 files - but
       at least I think I've now got round it).

7. How fast is rdiff-backup? Can it be run on large data sets?

   rdiff-backup can be limited by the CPU, disk IO, or available bandwidth, and the length of a session can be affected by the amount of data, how much the data changed, and how many files are present. That said, in the typical case the number/size of changed files is relatively small compared to that of unchanged files, and rdiff-backup is often either CPU or bandwidth bound, and takes time proportional to the total number of files. Initial mirrorings will usually be bandwidth or disk bound, and will take much longer than subsequent updates.

   To give two arbitrary data points, when I back up my personal HD locally (about 9GB, 600000 files, maybe 50 MB turnover, 1.1Ghz athlon) rdiff-backup takes about 35 minutes and is usually CPU bound. Another user reports an rdiff-backup session takes about 3 hours (80GB, ~1mil files, 2GB turnover) to back up remotely Tru64 -> linux.