Page 1 of 1

mintBackup bogged down over named pipe files

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 12:51 pm
by setepos
Installed Mint 11 LXDE couple of days ago. Ran minBackup for the first time using default options (do checksum, preserve permision and time stamps etc). It could not get pass some named pipe special files, then bogged down right there:

File: .lastpass/pipes/lastpassffplugin
its permission: prw-r--r--
its size = 0

I of course can exclude .lastpass directory from the backup list in order to proceed, but it is not exactly what I want. A backup software ought to be able to work with any legit file on a disk.

thanks

Re: mintBackup bogged down over named pipe files

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:40 pm
by DrHu
setepos wrote:I of course can exclude .lastpass directory from the backup list in order to proceed, but it is not exactly what I want. A backup software ought to be able to work with any legit file on a disk.
I don't know that an extension(add-on) for Firefox can be called a legitimate backup file
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 1&p=317425
  • Then again, is it a permissions p[roblem for the backup program..
[/list]

Re: mintBackup bogged down over named pipe files

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:42 pm
by xenopeek
Named pipes make no sense to backup I think, as it is basically a FIFO (first in, first out) bucket for interprocess communication (sharing information between two or more running processes). If you restore a named pipe, what will the receiving application do with the bucket of information from the time it was backed up? Named pipes only make sense as applications are using them, not weeks or months later when you need to do a restore.

Are you given a warning, or a fatal error? (i.e., do you get your backup or not?)

I looked at the issues reported for mintBackup, and this one isn't there. It would be proper for mintBackup to issue a warning on encountering named pipes, but it should continue to make the backup and ignore those files. If it isn't doing that, perhaps a bug report is in order.

Re: mintBackup bogged down over named pipe files

Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2011 1:57 pm
by setepos
xenopeek wrote:Named pipes make no sense to backup I think, as it is basically a FIFO (first in, first out) bucket for interprocess communication (sharing information between two or more running processes). If you restore a named pipe, what will the receiving application do with the bucket of information from the time it was backed up? Named pipes only make sense as applications are using them, not weeks or months later when you need to do a restore.

Are you given a warning, or a fatal error? (i.e., do you get your backup or not?)

It would be proper for mintBackup to issue a warning on encountering named pipes, but it should continue to make the backup and ignore those files. If it isn't doing that, perhaps a bug report is in order.
Files are backed up before hitting a named pipe file. Then it just sits there, no warning or anything - no noticible activities. I had to manually close the window to abort the process.

Re: mintBackup bogged down over named pipe files

Posted: Sat Sep 10, 2011 2:57 am
by xenopeek
Ok, I was able to easily reproduce it and filed a bug report for this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/846262