Re: tarsnap, cron, shell

[Colin Brace <cb@lim.nl>]

On 04/05/2010 11:41 PM, Colin Percival wrote:
> That error means that the cache directory Tarsnap is using it out of sync
> with what's on the server.  This almost certainly means that Tarsnap is
> trying to use the wrong cache directory.
>
> How this is happening exactly, I'm not sure; but do any/all of the
> following files exist
>    
> > /usr/local/etc/tarsnap.conf
> > /root/.tarsnaprc
> > /home/*/.tarsnaprc
> >      
> and do they contain 'cachedir /path/to/somewhere' directives?
>    

OK, I see the problem. The /usr/local/etc/tarsnap.conf file contains the 
default values:

cachedir /usr/local/tarsnap-cache

whereas, the /root/.tarsnaprc contains:

cachedir /home/colin/.tarsnap-cache

By way of explanation: I first set up tarsnap to backup a set of files 
in my home directory. I created /usr/local/tarsnap-cache but everytime I 
tried to run tarsnap as a user, it complained about being unable to 
"sanitize permissions" in the cache dir, despite setting  permissions as 
go+rw, so I created a cache-dir in my home directory. When I went to 
configure tarsnap to back up some system files via cron, I used the same 
cache-dir in the root .tarsnaprc.

The root .tarsnap file contains:

# Tarsnap cache directory
# cachedir /Users/isaacs/.tarsnap/tarsnap-cache
cachedir /home/colin/.tarsnap-cache

# Tarsnap key file
keyfile /root/venus-tarsnap.key
[...]

but apparently the /usr/local/etc settings take precendence, although 
the man page suggests this is otherwise:

[...]
FILES

     ${prefix}/etc/tarsnap.conf
             The system global tarsnap configuration file.  Parameters 
speci-
             fied here only take effect if they are not specified via 
the cur-
             rent user's local configuration file or via the command line.

     ~/.tarsnaprc
             The tarsnap configuration file for the current user.  
Parameters
             specified here take effect unless they are specified via 
the com-
             mand line.
[...]

Jobs in /usr/local/etc/periodic/daily are executed as root, right? 
Shouldn't tarsnap be reading and giving priority to the settings in 
/root/.tarsnaprc ? It appears not to be, since it also complained about 
not being able to find the key file, despite this line in the root rc file:

keyfile /root/venus-tarsnap.key

(I created a symlink to fix that.)

Thanks.

--
  Colin Brace
  Amsterdam
  http://lim.nl