[SOLVED] Issue with backup client and restore of ubuntu server from PBS

[AraToken]

Hello!
i am currently experimenting around with the backup client. In short i am trying to find a suitable way to backup servers from root-level that are NOT on PVE (means bare metal servers, not VMs.)
I managed to install the backup client on my ubuntu 22.04 test system without problems and managed to create a backup. Now i am struggling with the restore process and i got a few questions regarding that.

Currently the restore always seems to stop at the first few steps, claiming that different targets already exist. At first it was the "aquota.group" and "aquota.user" files which i simply excluded in my backup step. However, now the process gets stuck with already existing soft links, for example bin...

Error: error extracting archive - error at entry "bin": EEXIST: File exists

I don't think i can simply go through my whole system and try to exclude every single symlink there is... So my questions are the following:

1.) Is there perhaps a nice workaround to tell the client to either follow the links or to ignore them? I read about the .pxarexclude files but i think implementing them everywhere will be way too much work, especially if i plan to script the whole process. I also already tried to use --override and --allow-existing-dirs but without success..

2.) Can i tell the backup client for the restore process to simply skip conflicting files and continue with the process instead of aborting the whole thing? I've checked the documentation multiple times but i cannot find anything suitable.

3.) Do i need to adjust my backup creation process to make things easier? Currently it looks like the following:
proxmox-backup-client backup archiv.pxar:/ --repository user@pbs@server:8007:Datastore --exclude aquota.group --exclude aquota.user

Thank you in advance for any help and tips!
Best regards!

 

[Chris]

Hi,
which version of proxmox-backup-client are you using? Please post the output of proxmox-backup-client version.

There was a bug [0] in the client previous to version 3.0.2 which did not cover symlinks or hardlinked files when using the `overwrite` flag.
The versions of the client >= 3.0.3 have a fix for this, with additional flags to specify which file types to overwrite if needed.

[0] https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4761

 

[AraToken]

Hi Chris,

thank you for your reply! Indeed i am using client Version 2.4.3, which was the version that got installed with using the bullseye-repositories.
I was unable to install the client using the bookworm-repo earlier because of some unmet dependencies that i was unable to solve. Would the bookworm-repo provide me with a fixed version of the client?

Thank you!

 

[Chris]

Hi Chris,

thank you for your reply! Indeed i am using client Version 2.4.3, which was the version that got installed with using the bullseye-repositories.
I was unable to install the client using the bookworm-repo earlier because of some unmet dependencies that i was unable to solve. Would the bookworm-repo provide me with a fixed version of the client?

Thank you!

Yes, this bugfix was not backported.

Although you use only the client within the Ubuntu VM please note nevertheless:
It is recommend to upgrade Proxmox VE 7.x and Proxmox Backup Server 2.x hosts to the latest versions, as these versions will be end of life in July 2024 [0].

[0] https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/FAQ

 

[AraToken]

Thank you for your help so far! With the newer version i was able to successfully backup and restore my files onto the ubuntu machine.

I have one last question regarding an error that i encountered. When i try to restore it directly at root-level i see the following:

Error: error extracting archive - encountered unexpected error during extraction: error at entry "": failed to leave directory: failed to apply directory metadata: failed to set ownership: Read-only file system (os error 30)

Of course i already checked that there is enough free space left on the device and if the system is actually read only, which it wasn't

I simply restored my backup in a different directory and the error did not appear again. Any idea wheree this comes from?

Thank you and best regards!

 

[Chris]

failed to set ownership: Read-only file system (os error 30)

Well, the cause is stated here, the restore process was not able to change ownership of the directory to the one encountered in the backup because the underlying filesystem was read-only. This might be caused if the filesystem is remounted read-only due to an error, check your systemd journal for errors and the smart values of the disks backing this storage.

 

[AraToken]

Okay, i will look into that again if i encounter it again but i did not see anything that would lead me to what point exactly he's trying to write. The part that confuses me here was the entry ""..

Anyways, because my initial question was answered and it works by now somewhat i will see this issue as solved.

Thank you again for your help!

 

[Chris]

Okay, i will look into that again if i encounter it again but i did not see anything that would lead me to what point exactly he's trying to write. The part that confuses me here was the entry ""..

Anyways, because my initial question was answered and it works by now somewhat i will see this issue as solved.

Thank you again for your help!

Well, the root entry has no filename inside a pxar archive, so I guess it failed to set the permissions on the restore target.