Re: Constant "sequence number mismatch" errors

[Colin Percival <cperciva@tarsnap.com>]

On 08/14/14 14:40, Aaron C. de Bruyn wrote:
> I run tarsnap every day from cron on my Linux laptop using th following command:
> 
> tarsnap -v --cachedir=/tmp/tarsnap/ --keyfile=/root/tarsnap.key -c -f
> aaronhome-$(date +%Y%M%d) --exclude cellmedia --exclude code --exclude download
> --exclude docs --exclude iso --exclude *cache* --exclude *Cache* --exclude
> *Trash* --exclude *trash* /home/aaron/
> 
> Every night it spits out the following message:
> tarsnap: Sequence number mismatch: Run --fsck
> tarsnap: Error creating new archive
> 
> So I run:
> 
> tarsnap -v --cachedir=/tmp/tarsnap/ --fsck --keyfile=/root/tarsnap.key --exclude
> cellmedia --exclude code --exclude download --exclude docs --exclude iso
> --exclude *cache* --exclude *Cache* --exclude *Trash* --exclude *trash* /home/aaron/
> 
> It runs through the check without any error messages, and I am able to manually
> run the cronjob to take a backup for the day.  The next morning it fails again
> with the same errors.
> 
> What am I missing?  :)

The most obvious possibility is that your /tmp/tarsnap/ is, well, on a
temporary file system.  The 'sequence number mismatch' error means that
the state of the cache directory does not match the state on the server
side, and if /tmp/ is getting cleaned up (e.g., when you reboot) that
would explain it.

If it's not that, are you sure that the some keys aren't being used
anywhere else?

-- 
Colin Percival
Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve
Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid