[mintbackup] can not handle named pipes

[o1092245]

1) The version and edition of Linux Mint you are using (if you are not sure, open a terminal and run "mintwelcome").
Linux Mint 11 GNOME 64 bits.

2) What you did for the problem to happen, and how to reproduce it.
The problem happens when you have a named pipe somewhere in your folders to backup. To reproduce, make a named pipe somewhere in the folders to backup with "mkfifo named_pipe", then proceed to backup. (I created a separate folder with a named pipe and some normal files in it, and only backed this up. For easily reproducing the issue.)

3) What happened.
Once the named_pipe file is to be processed by mintbackup, it hangs indefinitely at that file with "Calculating checksum" in the progress bar.

4) What you expected to happen instead.
That any named pipes would be ignored or a warning issues for them, but that mintbackup would finish doing a backup.

5) If the problem happened once, sometimes, or always.
It happens always if you have a named pipe in your folders to backup.

For one real example, the Firefox add-on LastPass creates a named pipe in the users home folder.

[Bill Johnson (wrjohnson58)]

I am on Linux Mint 11 GNOME 32 bit and Mintbackup also hangs for me on LastPass as described in the original bug report.

[Lehel (gladia2r)]

This is still not addressed, after 2 years?
I can just say - wow.

Note that the issue is with pipes with the last character, where the Backup Tool gets stuck:

lehel@lehel-Dell ~ $ ll .steam |grep pipe
prw------- 1 lehel lehel 0 Jul 19 11:34 steam.pipe|

The "|" character.
Let me know, what can be done other than excluding every instance.
Maybe an exclude profile would be advised to be created as well, in order to avoid creating the exclude list every time.

[Lehel (gladia2r)]

Additionally the following file should be excluded by default too:

-r-------- 1 root root 128T Jul 22 21:27 /proc/kcore

LinuxMint 14
kernel: 3.5.0-17-generic

[iggynelix (iggynelix)]

Using Linux Mint 16 Petra, and Mintbackup is hanging for me on .lastpass/pipes/lastpassplugin.
Curiously, the hang is not on "checksum" for me, but rather is "Skipping idntical file"

[Mardy (mardyf)]

Here's one more. On Linux Mint 16, MATE, the Backup Tool is hanging at "Calculating checksum" for .lastpass/pipes/lastpassffplugin.

And here's another curiosity, possibly irrelevant, possibly not. With swappiness set to 10 and 16 GB of RAM available, each time I've seen the backup freeze, System Monitor reports that there are a dozen or so megabytes of Swap in use despite the fact that more than 80% of RAM is still available. Is it hardcoded to use Swap as a scratchpad when calculating checksums? Could that be contributing to this issue?

[Stephan Helas (shelas)]

The same here for .steam/steam.pipe. Backup seams to need the sudo password but die dialog stays hidden

melvin 19564 2874 0 Jun03 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/mintbackup
melvin 19569 19564 0 Jun03 ? 00:00:00 sh -c gksu --message "<b>Please enter your password</b>" /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintBackup/mintBackup.py
melvin 19570 19569 0 Jun03 ? 00:00:31 gksu --message <b>Please enter your password</b> /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintBackup/mintBackup.py
root 19571 19570 0 Jun03 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/sudo -H -S -p GNOME_SUDO_PASS -u root -- /usr/lib/linuxmint/mintBackup/mintBackup.py

[dennis devid (d-r-devid68)]

HELP
backup freezes at start with dir /bin..../hidden
just calculating never stops
I am using linux mint 17.2 mate 64 bit PLease HELP soon i want to make backup!

[mikeb (mikeb-z)]

mintbackup hangs when trying to backup any pipe - I believe it should exclude those file types by default. (this just occurred to me in Mint 16 Petra with mintbackup 2.1.1)

To workaround the problem, run the following command in a terminal window with the current directory set to the directory you will backup:

        find . -type p

for any filename listed, add it to the Backup Tool's (mintbackup's) set of excluded files.

[Paul Steckler (steck)]

I just tried using the Mint Backup tool in Mint 17 Cinnamon, in preparation for an upgrade to Mint 18.

I had a named pipe file in a subdirectory of my home directory, and the tool got stuck when processing that file.

I deleted that file, and I've confirmed there are no other named pipes in my home directory.

It seems to me that this should be an easy bug fix.

[Chaotic Artiste (biohazard)]

Should be an easy bug to fix, but it continues to languish here after half a decade.