BackupPc fails with SIGPIPE

Question

I run BackupPc on a Debian Squeeze server. It backups other Debian Squeeze machines on my LAN succesfully. I've setup it to backup another Debian Squeeze machine on Wan, but the backup always fails with the error message:

Aborting backup up after signal PIPE
Got fatal error during xfer (aborted by signal=PIPE)

The backup is executed via ssh, and the configuration of this backup client is:

$Conf{RsyncArgs} = [
        # Do not edit these!
            '--numeric-ids',
            '--perms',
            '--owner',
            '--group',
            '--devices',
            '--links',
            '--times',
            '--block-size=2048',
            '--recursive',
        #
        # If you are using a patched client rsync that supports the
        # --checksum-seed option (see http://backuppc.sourceforge.net),
        # then uncomment this to enabled rsync checksum cachcing
        #
        '--checksum-seed=32761',
        #
        # Add additional arguments here
        #
        '-D',
        '--one-file-system',
];
$Conf{FullPeriod} = 6.97;
$Conf{IncrPeriod} = 0.49;
$Conf{FullKeepCnt} = 4;
$Conf{IncrKeepCnt} = 93;
$Conf{XferMethod} = 'rsync';
$Conf{RsyncShareName} = '/';
$Conf{BackupFilesExclude} = [
        '/cdrom',
        '/dev',
        '/files/_nobackup',
        '/floppy',
        '/lost+found',
        '/mnt',
        '/proc',
        '/sys',
        '/tmp/ssh-*',
        '/var/lib/amavis/amavisd.sock',
        '/var/lib/backuppc',
        '/var/lib/nagios3/rw/nagios.cmd',
        '/var/run/acpid.socket',
        '/var/run/clamav/clamd.ctl',
        '/var/run/courier/authdaemon/socket',
        '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock',
        '/var/run/nut/usbhid-ups-apc_backups_cs500',
        '/var/run/proftpd.sock',
        '/var/run/screen',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/amavis',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/anvil',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/bounce',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/bsmtp',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/defer',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/discard',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/error',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/ifmail',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/lmtp',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/local',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/maildrop',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/odmr',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/proxymap',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/relay',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/retry',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/rewrite',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/scache',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/scalemail-backend',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/smtp',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/tlsmgr',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/trace',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/uucp',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/verify',
        '/var/spool/postfix/private/virtual',
        '/var/spool/postfix/public/cleanup',
        '/var/spool/postfix/public/flush',
        '/var/spool/postfix/public/pickup',
        '/var/spool/postfix/public/qmgr',
        '/var/spool/postfix/public/showq',
        '/var/spool/postfix/var/run/saslauthd/mux',
        '/var/spool/squid',
];
$Conf{XferLogLevel} = 1;
$Conf{CompressLevel} = 9;
$Conf{PingMaxMsec} = 200;
$Conf{ClientTimeout} = 3600*8;          # 6 Hours!!

I tried a local tar backup to see if there is some issue woth the filesystem, and everything gone fine.

Any suggestions on how to debug ?

more info needed. Like, how are you backing up ? I'm assuming over ssh ? — Sirex, Jan 11 '12 at 14:24
An excerpt of the config would probably be very helpful for us. — Tim, Jan 11 '12 at 14:38
I've edited the original question. Yes, rsync over ssh. The config file is now in the question. Thank you ! — GabrieleV, Jan 11 '12 at 15:12

score 12 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 29 '17 at 19:41

12

I've invesitgate on the meaning of sigpipe. As described in SIGPIPE - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

On POSIX-compliant platforms, SIGPIPE is the signal sent to a process when it attempts to write to a pipe without a process connected to the other end. ...

So I suspected that the trouble was with the ssh transport that gets disconnected.

I've setup a longer timeout to ssh using the options -o ServerAliveInterval=300, in the config:

$Conf{RsyncClientCmd} = '$sshPath -o ServerAliveInterval=300 -q -x -l root $host
 $rsyncPath $argList+';

Now the backup has complete successfully!

edited Nov 29 '17 at 19:41

Philip Kirkbride

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answered Jan 12 '12 at 10:47

GabrieleV

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13

I had a similar error and I googled and came this page. I also use rsync method and in configuration file I do not have $Conf{RsyncClientCmd} variable. Where(main conf file or client conf file) should I provide the above statement? – Subhransu Mishra Dec 03 '12 at 12:05
In client conf file if you want to apply this modification only to a specific client. In main conf, if you want this behavior applied globally. – GabrieleV Dec 04 '12 at 19:12
It doesn't work on my installation. BackupPC 3.3.0 – Jesper Grann Laursen Jun 28 '13 at 12:44
I had the same error message after deleting a directory listed as to be backed up from the filesystem and not updating the backup list in backuppc FWIW. – jopasserat Apr 24 '17 at 19:27

Davids Stack · Answer 2 · 2017-11-30T16:54:56.173

Just in case this is useful to others, we were getting both aborted by signal=PIPE and Child exited prematurely on some backups (only incremental backups it would seem). Adjusting the $Conf(RsyncClientCmd) didn't work for our installation of BackupPc 3.1 on Centos 5 (soon to be upgraded), as it broke the attempt to connect in the first place. We are using rsync over ssh.

As the machine was dedicated to doing backups and we were concerned about others using ssh access, we simply set ClientAliveInterval=300 in /etc/ssh/sshd_conf on the client machines (not the BackupPc server), but this could have been done for the individual login instead.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 02 '16 at 16:00

I got this message when running backups with BackupPC just because the RsyncShareName parameter (that defines which folders should be synced) was not correct: the given folder didn't exist on the server.

You could check at this parameter in the Xfer settings.

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 05 '18 at 23:37

0

I got the same issue and I finally figured it out. When you define host specific directories to back up for a host and one of these directories does not exist, rsync will fail with message like:

Got fatal error during xfer (aborted by signal=PIPE)

After removing the directory everything works perfectly without any additional rights on rsync.

Hope my experience will help you guys.

edited Mar 05 '18 at 23:37

Andrew Schulman

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answered Mar 05 '18 at 22:29

Lord-Y

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BackupPc fails with SIGPIPE

4 Answers4