Error: Backup was unsuccessful. TAR ended prematurely due to errors.

[LAZA]

I use Manjaro Xfce, which is a Arch based distro with self-compiled sbackup.
Works since two years without any problems.

Now it seems it has a problem with the external drive (still the same since years) or a internal problem:

loose translation:
ERROR: Backup was unsuccessful. TAR ended prematurely due to errors.
/ bin / tar: The following options were used after any non-optional arguments in archive create or update mode. These options are positional and affect only arguments that follow them. Please, rearrange them properly.
/ bin / tar: - exclude-from '/tmp/sbackup/excludes.list' has no effect
gzip: warning: GZIP environment variable is deprecated; use an alias or script
/ bin / tar: Removing leading `/ 'from member names
Total bytes written: 131196948480 (123GiB, 23Mib / s)
/ bin / tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors
(exit code: 2)
2018-01-01 21: 30: 36.901 - ERROR: The following error occurred during the backup: Backup was unsuccessful. TAR ended prematurely due to errors.

You can see the full problem in the Manjaro forum:

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/copy-from-external-drive-esata-to-external-drive-usb3-fails-at-20-6-gb/37035

Please ask for more information if needed.

Thanks in advance

[LAZA (laza74)]

After a successfull run last week i got this error again

Screenshot:

<a href="https://i.imgur.com/s9JDXTK.png">
  <img src="https://imgur.com/s9JDXTKl.png" />
</a>

[LAZA (laza74)]

And something very strange happened:

They backup from yesterday has a correct dir name
2018-01-08_22.33.12.166278.manjaro.ful

But the name of the backup dir before was changed to
2018-01-01_22.33.11.891251.manjaro.corrupt

So the new backup "sees" that the older one is defective but cannot rename - in the beginning of the backup process - created dir to "corrupt".

I will now remove the configuration and create a new one.

[LAZA (laza74)]

Backup fails also with a
- new profile created
- other external drive
- other connection (USB3 instead of eSATA)

[Oumar Aziz OUATTARA (wattazoum)]

Hi,

Can you open the Configuration GUI, go on the last TAB (Report) and set the log level to DEBUG ?
Then save and launch a backup. This should give you a more verbose log file (with the TAR line launched by sbackup).

Can you also give the version of TAR on your system ? (tar --version)

[LAZA (laza74)]

Here we go:

http://filehorst.de/d/cCufvpHx

tar is

# tar --version
tar (GNU tar) 1.30

[LAZA (laza74)]

If i downgrade tar to version 1.29 i get a warning but finished successfully!

Total bytes written: 182089082880 (170GiB, 5.2MiB/s)
2018-01-30 07:58:25,464 - INFO in tar.__finish_tar(541): TAR returned warnings but has been finished successfully.
2018-01-30 07:58:25,500 - DEBUG in snapshot.commitverfile(574): Commit `ver` file `file:///mnt/Backup/2018-01-29_22.33.11.710648.manjaro.ful/ver` with info `1.5`
2018-01-30 07:58:25,500 - INFO in profile_handler.process(222): Backup process finished.

[LAZA (laza74)]

Today same error with "tar 1.29" :-(

[Francesco Potortì (pot)]

The patch is very simple:

$ locate *tar.py
/usr/share/sbackup/sbackup/ar_backend/tar.py

then edit tar.py, go to line 270. You find:

    options.append('--files-from=%s' % tmp_incl)
    options.append('--exclude-from=%s' % tmp_excl)

invert the two lines, like this:

    options.append('--exclude-from=%s' % tmp_excl)
    options.append('--files-from=%s' % tmp_incl)

Now save tar.py and the problem is corrected.