Available space prediction for ftp is incorrect

[sampattuzzi]

Let me explain the senario, I'm backing up to my ftp server and the backup keeps telling me that I don't have enough space though I know I have. My backup server is using Ubuntu 8.10 and the ftp server is vsftpd. All users are chrooted into their home directories. The backup user's (the user used to login via NSsbackupd) directory is on an external hard drive.

I have tried to debug this problem and it seems that, though curlftpfs is predicting the wrong available space on the server (found by doing a df on the mount directory), the wrong prediction is too high not too small. The available space given is: 7999999992.

That makes me think that the problem comes from pythons os.statvfs and that this is giving the incorrect available space. The problem might arrise from the fact that the storage location for the ftp user is on an external hard drive. So I am not sure if statvfs is giving the available space of a) my local root partition or b) my servers root partition. Whatever it is giving, it isn't giving the available space of the external hard drive.

Looking at the available space on each doesn't help much either because the amount that statvfs reports is: 17316188160. However, the local root partition is: 16910412 and the server root is: 18176076. Now I realise that statvfs is reporting bytes and df is reporting blocks but I'm not sure how to do the comparison properly. If I use the -h option on df I get: 17G and 18G respectively.

The version of NSsbackup installed is 0.2-0 RC7. It was installed from the PPA. This is all running from Ubuntu 9.04. The log file is attached.

[Oumar Aziz OUATTARA (wattazoum)]

According to the log file the space needed for the backup is more than 50G. This is because we can't evaluate the necessary compressed space. Then NSsbackup is evaluating the available space to 17G. that's why it tells you this warning.

Can you precise is you have 50G free on your FTP server ?

[sampattuzzi (sam-pattuzzi)]

Unfortunately I'm no longer using Nssbackup. Pretty much as a direct result of this bug. I can't tell you how much space I had at the time of the bug but I do know that l now have 90G on the external hard drive. I don't think I deleted much stuff. Maybe Nssbackup tries to store some data locally before sending it of and this causes the problem?

[Oumar Aziz OUATTARA (wattazoum)]

Sorry to hear that, but it's completely understandable. It wasn't usable for you because of this bug. I believe that the problem were the result returned by the IBackup FTP when asked for available space.