Re: Tarsnap GUI shows 0 data archived or backed up

[amar@sdf.org]

Hi,

Thanks again.

> 2. You started a backup for said Job at 00-57-08 and then another which
> failed with:
> [18/08/17 1:04 AM] Backup Job_weekly tarsnap backup_2017-08-18_01-04-30
> failed: tarsnap: Transaction already in progress

I was not aware of this. I didn't get any notifications/prompt either. I
thought it could run more than one backup in parallel. My bad. Maybe it's
in the docs which I didn't go through. Also, I started using Tarsnap only
because of this GUI. I have known about since 2010 (iirc) but I waited
till the GUI arrived. So I kind of thought I will see what happens loud
and clear.

(off-topic - I am not CLI averse, but I, for some reason, I prefer GUI for
backup etc)

> Which is correct since you can't run multiple create/delete operations
> with tarsnap, these two operations are mutually-exclussive.
>
> 3. You exited the app and ran it again, while the first backup ran in the
> background still. You tried a manual backup again which failed for the
> same reason.

Got it now.

> 4. You started a new session when you woke up, I see 8:40 AM. You queued a
> dropbox on-demand backup which started running immediately. I see no
> backup finished for the initial backup at 2017-08-18_00-57-08 which I
> assume you killed the process either by system shutdown or otherwise.

I had closed the lid of my Mac. That must be the reason. I didn't know
that the previous one was killed. I couldn't see it in the GUI. Actually I
couldn't see much (and I believe a lot about this may have to do with the
fact that I know little about this app - downloaded and started using with
similar expectations as some popular backup apps and since this one is
quite new I shouldn't have)

> 5. Then you followed with more actions which failed with:
> [18/08/17 1:35 PM] Backup Job_weekly tarsnap backup_2017-08-18_10-03-42
> failed: tarsnap: Error looking up v1-0-0-server.tarsnap.com: nodename nor
> servname provided, or not known
> These are network issues, check your firewall if you have one or could
> have been just a temporary network problem on your side.

No. Not something I can remember. Maybe a few seconds or at max few
minutes but definitely not more than that.

Firewall is off.

> I see you had better success with creating archives and jobs later on
> between 21-22. Can you confirm that you have those backups showing up in
> the GUI?

Yes, I have a job and it has been backing up daily. I think I will leave
it at that.

Yes, I still have that Job and couple of archives related to that.

Naming the columns in GUI will help.

Also, and this is just a feedback, instead of showing size of every
archive as full 1.55GB (in my case) as the prominent/visible size it will
be better to show the actual size/diff of that archive and show full size
elsewhere in info or in another column (if there are to be more columns).

Also when I see Settings > Account I see "total backup size" as 18.4 GB ~
1.55 x 12 (12 is my number of archives). While in a way this correct this
doesn't give the clear picture. That is definitely not the total backup or
data size either on my machine or Tarsnap servers. Yes, if done
individually it  would have been that but I think it's not.

I have doubt - that I might be missing something here. As in Tarsnap,
maybe creates separate snapshot points in time of all the data and
non-unique (previously backed up) data/chunks/pieces are kind of
referenced from where they are. Or something like that. Even in that case,
the total data being backed up shown as actual data on client x no. of
archives kinda seems weird.

Log could either be ON by defaults or shown in at least the GUI setup
steps as an option. I believe this is very crucial in seeing what is
happening especially since GUI is kinda new (not really new new though :P)

In fact I would like to see how much of my data is currently selected for
being backed up and I am not able to see that. It is 1.45 GB.

I have a questions though and instead of asking that in a separate thread
I thought I will ask that here itself:

I am backing up 1.45 GB and I see the usage are 1.07 GB. Yes, there are
other archives but they are in KBs. Even after the first archive I believe
it was either 1.07 GB or something very close to it - it was > 1 GB.

So, can I make it smaller than 1.07 GB? Am I doing something wrong? I can
explain what kind data are part of those 1.45 GB (can give a breakup too
if needed).

Can I compress it more, make de-duplication more aggressive? I have used
the default config that came with the app.

Regards.

--
Amar