Bad day with xfsrestore, what went wrong?

Bad day with xfsrestore, what went wrong?

[Michael Lueck]

Greetings-

I hope this is the NNTP equiv of the email list found on this web page:
http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/

I have been using XFS with Debian for a number of years with great success. Today, xfsrestore really threw me a curve ball. I am wondering what went wrong.

I had wanted to restore from an old backup some directories that I discovered I had need of. I used the following syntax to get the restore started:

xfsrestore -J -E -f /mnt/ext_backup/ldslnx01/20061220/data -s shares/data -i -v verbose /srv

I selected some directories to restore through the interactive interface, then allowed it to restore the specified files.

What it ended up doing, HOWEVER, was to restore every file present in that old backup that was no longer on disk!

Thus, what went wrong?

Thanks!

-- 
Michael Lueck
Lueck Data Systems
http://www.lueckdatasystems.com/

Re: Bad day with xfsrestore, what went wrong?

[Michael Lueck]

No suggestions / possible answers anyone for my question...

Michael Lueck wrote:
> Greetings-
> 
> I hope this is the NNTP equiv of the email list found on this web page:
> http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/
> 
> I have been using XFS with Debian for a number of years with great 
> success. Today, xfsrestore really threw me a curve ball. I am wondering 
> what went wrong.
> 
> I had wanted to restore from an old backup some directories that I 
> discovered I had need of. I used the following syntax to get the restore 
> started:
> 
> xfsrestore -J -E -f /mnt/ext_backup/ldslnx01/20061220/data -s shares/data -i -v verbose /srv
> 
> I selected some directories to restore through the interactive 
> interface, then allowed it to restore the specified files.
> 
> What it ended up doing, HOWEVER, was to restore every file present in 
> that old backup that was no longer on disk!
> 
> Thus, what went wrong?
> 
> Thanks!

-- 
Michael Lueck
Lueck Data Systems
http://www.lueckdatasystems.com/

Re: Bad day with xfsrestore, what went wrong?

[Bill Kendall]

Michael Lueck wrote:
> No suggestions / possible answers anyone for my question...
> 
> Michael Lueck wrote:
>> Greetings-
>>
>> I hope this is the NNTP equiv of the email list found on this web page:
>> http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/
>>
>> I have been using XFS with Debian for a number of years with great 
>> success. Today, xfsrestore really threw me a curve ball. I am 
>> wondering what went wrong.
>>
>> I had wanted to restore from an old backup some directories that I 
>> discovered I had need of. I used the following syntax to get the 
>> restore started:
>>
>> xfsrestore -J -E -f /mnt/ext_backup/ldslnx01/20061220/data -s 
>> shares/data -i -v verbose /srv
>>
>> I selected some directories to restore through the interactive 
>> interface, then allowed it to restore the specified files.
>>
>> What it ended up doing, HOWEVER, was to restore every file present in 
>> that old backup that was no longer on disk!
>>
>> Thus, what went wrong?
>>
>> Thanks!
> 

Hi Michael,

I tried to reproduce this using the command line you supplied, but
everything worked as expected for me. Perhaps try it without the -i
(so that only subtrees given with -s are restored), just to rule out
the possibility that you inadvertently added all files to the restore
list.

Bill

Re: Bad day with xfsrestore, what went wrong?

[Michael Lueck]

Bill Kendall wrote:

> I tried to reproduce this using the command line you supplied, but
> everything worked as expected for me.

Glad to hear that. Seems my tried and true syntax _can_ still work.

> Perhaps try it without the -i (so that only subtrees given with -s are restored), just to rule out
> the possibility that you inadvertently added all files to the restore list.

Enough putzing with a production server I think.

It was odd that it only put back files present in that old backup set and did not overwrite everything... thankfully!

Anyway, thanks for checking / verifying my usual restore syntax that it is the correct syntax.

-- 
Michael Lueck
Lueck Data Systems
http://www.lueckdatasystems.com/

Re: Bad day with xfsrestore, what went wrong?

[Timothy Shimmin]

Hi Michael,

Michael Lueck wrote:
> xfsrestore -J -E -f /mnt/ext_backup/ldslnx01/20061220/data -s shares/data -i -v verbose /srv 
> Bill Kendall wrote:
> 
>> I tried to reproduce this using the command line you supplied, but
>> everything worked as expected for me.
> 
> Glad to hear that. Seems my tried and true syntax _can_ still work.
> 
>> Perhaps try it without the -i (so that only subtrees given with -s are
>> restored), just to rule out
>> the possibility that you inadvertently added all files to the restore
>> list.
> 
> Enough putzing with a production server I think.
> 
> It was odd that it only put back files present in that old backup set
> and did not overwrite everything... thankfully!
> 
Maybe the -E option helped you out there.

  -E   Prevents  xfsrestore from overwriting newer versions of files.  
  The inode modification time of the on-media file is com‐
  pared to the inode modification time of corresponding file in the dest directory.  
  The file is restored only if the  on-media  version  is newer than the version
  in the dest directory.  The inode modification time of a file can be displayed
  with the ls -lc command.

--Tim

Re: Bad day with xfsrestore, what went wrong?

[Michael Lueck]

Timothy Shimmin wrote:
> Maybe the -E option helped you out there.
> 
>   -E   Prevents  xfsrestore from overwriting newer versions of files.  

fffffeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!! :-)

Thank you Tim! You put a smile on my face.

I worked out that syntax about 5 years ago, keep it in a text file, update as needed, and paste it into an SSH session. That is why I was so surprised that "something" went wrong.

Thanks again!

-- 
Michael Lueck
Lueck Data Systems
http://www.lueckdatasystems.com/