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Why can't I backup my HOME-dir recursively?

Asked by stephanos

Hi,

I really like BiT compared to TimeVault and Flyback; however, I can't get it to work properly.

I try to backup my entire HOME-dir. If I add it to the Include dirs and have no Exclude entries, it backups all files (hidden and non-hidden) in that folder, but for all of the sub directories only an empty folder is created (same for hidden and non-hidden).

Doesn't matter if it is the first snapshot or the nth snapshot.

The weird thing is, if I choose a sub dir directly like ~/Documents, I works like a charm.

I don't know if it is relevant, but the USB drive I'm backuping up to is formatted FAT32.

Does anybody know what I'm/it's doing wrong?

Cheers,
Stephan

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Revision history for this message
stephanos (exe2) said : 		#1

I just did a new installation of Jaunty, now it seems to work.
Weird.

Revision history for this message
Darren.Thiessen (darrencthiessen) said : 		#2

I have also come across this problem. I backs up some of the directories, but most it just creates and empty folder. I have done this twice now, and it seems to have a limit of 27.3 GB. Both snapshots are only that large, and my /home/darren folder is around 400GB. I do not know what is happing. BIT seems to think it's done backing up after only 20 minutes, i know it should take quite a bit longer to backup ~400GB. BTW this is a new in stall of 9.04, external 500GB drive formated to FAT32 connected via eSATA (which works for all others, I can physically move the folder to the drive via nautilus).

Please let me know what the problem might be.

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Bart de Koning (bratdaking) said : 		#3

Can you tell us if your home is situated on only one partition? Because it
does not follow softlinks. Do you use BIT with or without administrator
rights? And I assume that you included your /home/darren folder, what did
you exclude? Per default it excludes hidden files (files starting with a .),
pattern .* . If a lot of your data is within a hidden folder it will not be
backupped (e.g. .wine), to avoid backuping your trash you could include the
hidden folders that are important.

Cheers,
Bart

2009/9/8 Darren.Thiessen <email address hidden>

> Question #68652 on Back In Time changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/backintime/+question/68652
>
> Darren.Thiessen posted a new comment:
> I have also come across this problem. I backs up some of the
> directories, but most it just creates and empty folder. I have done
> this twice now, and it seems to have a limit of 27.3 GB. Both snapshots
> are only that large, and my /home/darren folder is around 400GB. I do
> not know what is happing. BIT seems to think it's done backing up after
> only 20 minutes, i know it should take quite a bit longer to backup
> ~400GB. BTW this is a new in stall of 9.04, external 500GB drive
> formated to FAT32 connected via eSATA (which works for all others, I can
> physically move the folder to the drive via nautilus).
>
> Please let me know what the problem might be.
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are an answer
> contact for Back In Time.
>

Revision history for this message
Kim Cascone (kim-anechoicmedia) said : 		#4

I just experienced the same problem. I already encountered the dreaded default of excluding hidden files (very bad decision to make this a default) but I find that my snapshot doesn't backup my ~/ directory recursively and all that it contains are empty directories one level down. For example I have ~/Audio, ~/Music, ~/Documents etc but nothing inside of them.
If Backintime is to be useful to anyone it might help to include a recursive check box in your include settings

I'm very very disappointed in this app for being half-baked and poorly thought out