rdiff-backup remote schema does not take input

Question

I'm trying to set up rdiff-backup between my windows host machine and my remote linux machine. I'm using Windows 8.1. SSH and rdiff-backup is indeed within the PATH environment variablle...

With the below command:

rdiff-backup --print-statistics --override-chars-to-quote --remote-schema "ssh -C %s -p1019 rdiff-backup --server" --exclude "**.dropbox**" --exclude "desktop.ini" "C:/Users/Adam/Dropbox" pi@192.168.0.5::/mnt/disk1/Adam/Dropbox

I recieve the following results:

ssh: connect to host 192.168.0.5 port 22: Connection refused Fatal Error: Truncated header string (problem probably being originated remotely)

Couldnt start up the remote connection by executing ssh -C pi@192.168.0.5 rdiff-backup --server

You would assume by that output that formatting of the command is incorrect. Although I must assure you I've read the manual and many examples online and this format is correct. As you can see from the command I've depicted -p1019. So Why is attempting port 22?! Even when I do the following command:

rdiff-backup --print-statistics --override-chars-to-quote --exclude "**.dropbox**" --exclude "desktop.ini" "C:/Users/Adam/Dropbox" pi@192.168.0.5::/mnt/disk1/Adam/Dropbox

(Difference being that the arguments given after --remote-schema are no longer present) I still get the exact same output. What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

I figured it out. The --override-chars-to-quote just wasn't any of it. Once I removed this AND added an extra % to %s so it became %%s my problems were solved.

I found this out by removing all the options, adding one at a time and trying all sorts of combinations until the error occurred. I narrowed it down to --override-chars-to-quote and then when I did, rdiff-backup spat out another error message: No arguments given. So I looked at what command was being entered and it was the % not being escaped (or whatever), and I remember reading elsewhere that including another % typically fixes some issues when using --remote-schema.

So it's official. --override-chars-to-quote just doesn't work. Either that or my understanding of the option is wrong - I'm transferring from a Windows file system to a Linux one. NTFS to VFAT (according to fdisk -l anyway).