Hello Folks,

I am facing some odd and maybe abnormal situation while backup files and directories from ext4 partitions to a smb/cifs network share whose partition is formated with ntfs.

Using rsync:

rsync -rvzhLKH --atimes *--times --exclude={'.cache','.Cache'} /opt/ /mnt/smb/USB_128GB_BACKUP/HP-ProBook_LinuxBox/opt/

=> some times the command preserve the timestamp, more often than not it does not preserve them -– same type of filesystems (ext4 => ntfs/cifs share)

It seems to copy everything (no incremental backup though, it is everything) and at the end it outputs the following:

sent 21.92G bytes *received 1.14M bytes *19.61M bytes/sec
total size is 23.51G *speedup is 1.07
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1336) [sender=3.2
.7]


Upon issue the command “du -BM -c”, at the end, the command outputs about 82GB which non-sense given that /opt only has about 23GB.

On the other hand if I used the following command:

ls -lR | awk '{ sum += $5 } END{ print sum } ' | awk '{print $1 / (1000*1000*1000) *}'

it outputs the right/expected amount: about 23GB.


So, the quandaries: 1) sometimes preserve and other times it does not preserve timestamps; 2) completely out of the wacky output from “du” for the cifs share; 3) no incremental backup (it always copies everything over and over); 4) the warning at the end, “rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) “ at first does not add up since I did not request to have permissions transferred with the command issued, no --perms or -p parameter (likely it would not work with dissimilar filesystems)

Note: the system used is Slackware64 current.


Note: "rsync --version" return the following:

rsync version 3.2.7 protocol version 31
Copyright (C) 1996-2022 by Andrew Tridgell, Wayne Davison, and others.


Thanks!

The error is probably due to the above.

The following might be relevant to your problem. What version of SMB are you using to connect to the share as well as kernel version.

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...em-4175672742/

#1 rsync is a file and folder synchronization tool, not a backup tool. It has no provision for storing data not preserved by the file systems.
#2 NTFS does not support Unix style file and folder timestamp data. EXT4 (and other Unix style file systems) will not support Microsoft style timestamps. Some utilities try to translate between them, but that is an uncertain kludge at best.

True backup software (like archive utilities) can capture that data AND METADATA intact, but does so to a tape or archive capsule. (Tar does this, for example.)

CIFS/SMB and NFS add another translation layer between, and I never recommend using them for backups if you have a better option.

ZABIX, BACKULA, and other enterprise level backup and recovery tools take care of this and allow direct over network backups from multiple operating systems, but are complex and overkill for the non-enterprise case.

If you are a competent Unix/Linux Admin I recommend doing compressed imaging for quarterly backups, and a burp server for your frequent backups to enable single file or folder restore and point-in-time recovery. (Burp uses rsync libraries to reduce traffic, deduplication at the block level, and compression to reduce storage requirements and speed up incremental backups.) It does require having a spare platform you can dedicate to backup storage use, and familiarity with ssh key base security.

The "*" before --times was a typo. I issued the command as state in my first post without the typo and the same issue present itself.

The device hosting the shared drive (flash drive, formated with ntfs) is actually a Nighthawk RAX120V2 router. I would imagine that it is smb2 or smb3.

I will look into the link.

Thanks!

Try using --dry-run without the -v option to see if rsync outputs the actual error or redirect output to a file.

Thanks for the insights.

Currently, I am using a powerful router (rav120v2) to host the drive been shared. So, it is very limited in terms of configuration, modification, fine tuning, etc. I also have a dedicate NAS (buffalo), but that also is limited. I was cogitating the use of a real linux box as file server (small computer device with raid and low power consumption), but that is something for the near future.

Imaging whole partition is certainly good idea as well for a full back every few months. Since in my case the /home and /opt (install third party software) are in dedicated partitions that would be easier.