[PLUG] Rdiff-backup script questions

[John Jason Jordan]

On Fri, 04 Jul 2014 18:31:51 -0700
Steve Dum <dr.doom at frontier.com> dijo:

>back to all those error messages - lots of stuff in / you might want
>to skip /proc, /dev, /run are magic system created by the kernel and
>should be skipped, no personal files there, /run as you found has
>sockets that running processes create.

OK, I just ran it again this evening, after editing my excludes list,
and I still get many of the same error messages. I added /run and /dev
to the excludes list and removed a couple items that no longer exist.
Here is my new excludes list:

- /run
- /dev
- /sys
- /media
- /mnt
- /tmp
- /proc
- /var/run/cups/cups.sock
- /var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5433
- /home/jjj/Distros
- **.iso
- **.ISO

And here are the new error messages:

SpecialFileError dev/log Socket error: AF_UNIX path too long
UpdateError home/jjj/.kde/share/apps/ktorrent/log Updated mirror temp
file /media/jjj/Data/Backups/Full_system_backup_Xubuntu-Bonobo/home/jjj/.kde/share/apps/ktorrent/rdiff-backup.tmp.642
does not match source 
SpecialFileError run/acpid.socket Socket error:
AF_UNIX path too long 
SpecialFileError run/avahi-daemon/socket Socket
error: AF_UNIX path too long 
SpecialFileError run/cups/cups.sock Socket
error: AF_UNIX path too long 
SpecialFileError
run/dbus/system_bus_socket Socket error: AF_UNIX path too long
SpecialFileError run/rpcbind.sock Socket error: AF_UNIX path too long
SpecialFileError run/sdp Socket error: AF_UNIX path too long
SpecialFileError run/udev/control Socket error: AF_UNIX path too long
SpecialFileError run/user/1000/pulse/native Socket error: AF_UNIX path
too long 
SpecialFileError run/wpa_supplicant/wlan0 Socket error:
AF_UNIX path too long

Except for the second one, they are all "path too long" errors that I
mentioned before was an rdiff-backup bug. But note that every one of
them is in /run or /dev, which are now in my excludes list. I don't
understand why I am getting error messages for files that it is not
supposed to be even trying to back up.

Regarding your point about whether I should just back up ~/ or try to
back up the whole system, I understand what you are saying. Indeed,
most of the system files would be useless because, if the drive dies
a horrible death, I will be forced to buy a new drive and do a fresh
install. Most of my my configurations are in dot files in ~/, but
probably not every one. I have lots of programs and configurations that
ordinary users have never heard of, and I have no idea where they keep
all their bits. I probably would never use any of the files outside of
~/, but disk space is cheap and I'd rather save it just in case. This
is a fast computer, / and /home are on an SSD and the backup drive is a
hybrid. Doing a full backup (70 GB) takes about 15-20 minutes and so
far I have used only about 10% of the hybrid.