Files not copied when backup directory is on smbfs

Mount a samba share using smbmount and then configure Back In Time to save snapshots into this share. Taking a snapshot don’t work, only some directories are created.

After some investigation: using a windows share it works, using a samba is doesn’t work.

Samba provide some extensions to the protocol to support uid/gid and permissions.
I mounted the share using smbmount (’sudo smbmount’) and I create a directory: the user/group of the new directory are root/root and the permissions are user:rwx and group/other:rx only. Then creating a sub-directory will fail since I don(t have the rights.

To void problems the only solution I found is to mount the share using “-o nosuids,noperms” arguments (not uid/gid and no permissions). This way the application seems to works. The only problem is that snapshots are no longer read-only. Starting from version 0.9.24, user/group and permissions are stored in a special file so restoring them should be OK.

KDE4: Could not connect to host for smb://smb-network/

The application allow you to select local folders only.

In KDE4 I use KFileDialog static method:

QString getExistingDirectory(
		KUrl     startDir=KUrl(),
		QWidget  parent=0,
		QString  caption=QString() )

According to the documentation:

Creates a modal directory-selection dialog and returns the selected directory (local only) or an empty string if none was chosen.

For more information:

• http://api.kde.org/pykde-4.1-api/kio/KFileDialog.html
• http://api.kde.org/pykde-4.2-api/kio/KFileDialog.html

So it is not normal to be able to select network. This looks more like a KDE4 bug.

Snapshots on NTFS drive are not read-only

The problem with read-write snapshot is that you can modify it accidentally. Even worst, if the file you modified is shared between different snapshots (hard-link) all snapshots will be affected.

This is because by default in ntfs-3g driver (this driver provide read/write support for NTFS)  files and directories are owned by the effective user and group of the mounting process (usually root) and everybody has full read, write, execution and directory browsing permissions.

To get more information:

• http://www.ntfs-3g.org/manual.html#3
• http://www.ntfs-3g.org/support.html#useroption

Solution

I don’t have one. Check out ntfs-3g site (http://www.ntfs-3g.org) for more information.If you find a solution please share it.

System freeze on Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04) with ext4

If you set snapshots directory on a ext4 partition the system may freeze.

It seems to be a problem in ext4 on Ubuntu:

• https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/330824
• http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/03/12/delayed-allocation-and-the-zero-length-file-problem/

Solution (thanks to mahikeulbody)

You need to  set ‘nodelalloc’ option for each ext4 partition it accesses into fstab file .