sbackup crashes while trying to compress files with tar

[skypixel]

on Ubuntu 10.10, with sbackup 0.11.4 installed from ppa.

After having launched the (incremental) backup with the backup now option, it starts computing the delta and whatnot.
About a minute later the daemon returns a gtk error message saying that the tar utility exited with an error code (which shoud be -11, according to the log).

Tar is launched with this command:
/bin/tar --gzip -cS --directory=/ --ignore-failed-read --blocking-factor 20 --totals --files-from=/home/myname/.local/share/sbackup/tmp/includes.list --exclude-from=/home/myname/.local/share/sbackup/tmp/excludes.list --checkpoint=858 --checkpoint-action=exec=/usr/share/sbackup/sbackup-progress --listed-incremental=/home/myname/.local/share/sbackup/tmp/files.snar

From tar docs:
"If tar has invoked a subprocess and that subprocess exited with a nonzero exit code, tar exits with that code as well. This can happen, for example, if tar was given some compression option."
So it may be a problem of gunzip, but I've tried also with bzip and it's the same.

[Jean-Peer Lorenz (peer.loz)]

Thanks for choosing sbackup and reporting this issue. In order to track down your problem please answer following questions:

Does this happens everytime? Is it reproducable?
Does a minimal setup (just a few files for test purpose) work?
Does the error also encounter with 'No compression' setting?
How do you invoke sbackup? As regular user or administator?

Thanks for your help.

[skypixel (skypixel)]

>Does this happens everytime?
Everytime.
Last time I successfully did an incremental backup was a couple of months ago.

>Is it reproducable?
Yes, I guess so...

>Does a minimal setup (just a few files for test purpose) work?
I tried to set up a testing profile with just a directory to backup (btw: the profile management UI is quite counterintuitive, IMHO...).
Then it happened a strange thing: it failed with the usual error massage ("Imposible completar satisfactoriamente. TAR finaizó con errores.", and the error icon in the notification bar), and after that it removed the log file, started a new backup session which finished with success.

>Does the error also encounter with 'No compression' setting?
Yes it does.
This is a log dump of that case:

2011-03-12 20:53:45,715 - DEBUG in tar.launch_sync(625): Lauching: /bin/tar -cS --directory=/ --ignore-failed-read --blocking-factor 20 --totals --files-from=/home/myname/.local/share/sbackup/tmp/includes.list --exclude-from=/home/myname/.local/share/sbackup/tmp/excludes.list --file=/media/Backup/Backup/2011-03-12_20.52.44.823547.entropic.inc/files.tar --checkpoint=1122 --checkpoint-action=exec=/usr/share/sbackup/sbackup-progress -L 102400 -F /usr/share/sbackup/multipleTarScript --listed-incremental=/home/myname/.local/share/sbackup/tmp/files.snar
2011-03-12 20:53:45,735 - DEBUG in tar.launch_sync(644): Subprocess created
2011-03-12 20:53:50,375 - DEBUG in tar.__finish_tar(502): Exit code: -11
2011-03-12 20:53:50,376 - DEBUG in tar.__finish_tar(503): Standard out:
2011-03-12 20:53:50,376 - DEBUG in tar.__finish_tar(504): Error out: /bin/tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
2011-03-12 20:53:50,377 - INFO in tar.__finish_tar(511): Leading '/' from member names were removed.
2011-03-12 20:53:50,378 - ERROR in tar.__finish_tar(541): Imposible completar satisfactoriamente. TAR finaizó con errores.
/bin/tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
(exit code: -11)
2011-03-12 20:53:50,382 - ERROR in backupproc.__notify_error(335): Während der Sicherung trat ein Fehler auf:
Imposible completar satisfactoriamente. TAR finaizó con errores.

>How do you invoke sbackup? As regular user or administator?
As regular user.

It's a pity because this piece of software just fit my needs (I really don't have the time to write my own scripts...).
I guess there's something wrong with my setup... I'll try to remove-purge and then re-install it all... Or launch the tar command from console and see its real error log...
I'll let you know if I discover something useful...

[skypixel (skypixel)]

I've tried to launch the tar command from console using the configuration files produced by sbackup.
It returned this error:

$ tar --gzip -cS --directory=/ --ignore-failed-read --blocking-factor 20 --totals --files-from=./includes.list --exclude-from=./excludes.list --checkpoint=858 --listed-incremental=./files.snar
gzip: compressed data not written to a terminal. Use -f to force compression.
For help, type: gzip -h
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names
Segmentation fault
$ echo $?
139

Then I've tried to do a full backup, and it worked.
So given that I changed some configuration settings of the backup profile since the last (incremental and successful) backup (e.g. I added and removed some directories), I guess tar didn't like the probable mismatch between the snar file and the present configuration...
Recap: try to change some profile settings and then do a incremental backup. That ___might___ be the matter.

[Jean-Peer Lorenz (peer.loz)]

I've also observed some issues when modifying profile settings between two snapshots. Thus, I'm marking this bug report as duplicate. Please reopen if new information are available.