[SOLVED] DataStore content is empty after moving it to a new server

[sabiwww]

I am doing a full VM restore test. The main server uses PBS to backup the VMs into a datastore and I use a cloud sync tool to copy the datastore files to the cloud.
I installed a new PVE and PBS on a different system, downloaded the files from the cloud and tried to add the datastore to PBS like this:

nano /etc/proxmox-backup/datastore.cfg

Content:

datastore: RestoreTest
        path /home/szabkel/restore/backup-server-storage

Then:

chown -R backup /home/szabkel/restore/backup-server-storage
chgrp -R backup /home/szabkel/restore/backup-server-storage

The datastore displays like this:


However the content looks like this:


The vm namespace is only there, because I manually tried to add it using the GUI. By default it only showed the root namespace.
Why can't I see the vm backups? On the main server, it looks like this:

 

[sabiwww]

Trying snapshot list:

 

[fabian]

well how does the content of /home/szabkel/restore/backup-server-storage look? can you post the output of ls -lah /home/szabkel/restore/backup-server-storage?

 

[l.ansaloni]

I also did not see the old backups after replacing the disk and copying the old data. The problem was due to an incorrect encoding of the filenames that had unknown characters:



after renaming all the folders like /repository_path/vm/XX/folder_bad_character old backups have appeared.

 

[sabiwww]

@fabian @l.ansaloni
Looks like this:


After replacing the special characters with

:

the backups are visible.
Thanks!

I should probably look into how to change the default backup folder naming schema.

 

[fabian]

how did you copy the datastore? and what was the intermediate storage?

 

[sabiwww]

how did you copy the datastore? and what was the intermediate storage?

I am copying the DataStore from PBS to my Synology NAS using rsync over the PVE mounted CIFS storage (PVE and PBS on the same server).
Then the NAS uses HyperBackup to sync it to the cloud.

The problem is I can't really extract the files out of HyperBackup's format on the server, so I used Windows as an intermediate to restore the files from HyperBackup and copy it over to the test server via a Samba share. Which caused the character problem in the folder names.

Otherwise it worked, I could restore the VM.

I should probably just schedule a cron job on the server and let it directly upload the files to Backblaze instead of using Synology's format.

 

[l.ansaloni]

how did you copy the datastore? and what was the intermediate storage?

I am using a QNAP NAS and I needed to replace the disks, it went through this procedure:

• copied the datastore to a USB disk with NTFS filesystem, I think the original filesystem of the QNAP NAS is ext4
• replaced the NAS disks and copied all the datastore from the USB disk to the new NAS share
• connected the datastore to Proxmox Backup Server by manually editing the /etc/proxmox-backup/datastore.cfg file

Before realizing not to see the old backups I made new backups and the space occupied did not increase as if the backups were starting from scratch but only as a normal incremental backup.

I then realized I couldn't see the old backups and found the ":" encoding error in old filenames.

 

[Bart19]

Hi all,

I also changed my Synology NAS. I'm running the PBS as a virtual one and mounted the share from the Synology NAS via NFS.
I've copied all data from old nas to new nas (using rclone) and changed the /etc/proxmox-backup/datastore.cfg afterwards.
But it does not show any backups...

I've read the hints with the encoding errors but my folder looks like


Any guess?

thanks in advance

 

[fabian]

those directory names seem to be corrupt.. they should look like this "2023-03-15T08:00:13Z"

 

[Bart19]

those directory names seem to be corrupt.. they should look like this "2023-03-15T08:00:13Z"

hmm okay. Is there any check on the timestamp? or can i rename the folders with a timestamp of a file inside the folder?

 

[fabian]

the timestamp is not encoded anywhere else, so you can probably reconstruct it from the timestamps of the files within (unless you have a copy of the datastore on tape or on a remote PBS, then you could reconstruct it from there by comparing checksums)

 

[Bart19]

the timestamp is not encoded anywhere else, so you can probably reconstruct it from the timestamps of the files within (unless you have a copy of the datastore on tape or on a remote PBS, then you could reconstruct it from there by comparing checksums)

Unfortunately the old NAS is already cleared
So I do only have the current state.
I will try to restore the folder names from the timestamp of the files inside