Ubuntu
backintime package

Can't save changes when a target disk is not plugged in

Asked by Nicholas K

I have BIT configured with three 'profiles' to do backups to three locations: one internal to my computer, which is always mounted; and two different external USB drives, which are usually not mounted.

Now I want to change the settings on the profile for the internal disk, but the two external disks are not plugged in. That should be fine, because who cares I'm not touching those other profiles, but I get an error message:

Couldn't find UUID for "/path/to/external/drive/backintime/dir/root/2"

The software is validating all three profiles and refusing to save if there is an error. That makes some sense, but in this case it's a problem because it is perfectly reasonable to have profiles which point to drives that aren't plugged in.

First, is there a workaround for this problem? One of the external disks is very inaccessible.

Second, I'd be willing to put a small bounty on fixing this issue, if that is appropriate for this software. In my opinion the appropriate fix is that the software should only validate a profile when that one profile is saved, and should only *warn* the user that the UUID can not be found, but then proceed to save the profile anyway.

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Ubuntu backintime Edit question
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Germar
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Best Germar (germar) said : 		#1

It's not the validation process but the process which creates crontab/udev schedules which does require the UUID. This was fixed in 1.1.4 (take a look at bug #1426881)

You can install current version from our PPA (ppa:bit-team/stable take a look at https://github.com/bit-team/backintime#ubuntu-ppa)

Please keep in mind that after updating you need to connect both drives and open/close Settings Dialog so BIT can cache the UUID for next time. After that Settings Dialog will work like expected.

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Nicholas K (ku-ubuntu) said : 		#2

Thank you for the explanation, when I googled this problem I didn't find that bug page.

I have been running an old LTS version of Ubuntu and when I pulled BIT from the PPA, or when I installed it from the Ubuntu Software feature, I would get an old version of BIT.

So now I am upgrading to a current version of Ubuntu, and I'm having many of the regular problems people have when updating Ubuntu. If it all works out in the end I'll come back and post a final update. Thank you!

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Nicholas K (ku-ubuntu) said : 		#3

Thanks Germar, that solved my question.