Why is rsnapshot claiming source directory doesn't exist?

Question

I'm trying to set up a backup system using rsnapshot which will copy files from a remote location into a local one. I've got rsnapshot set up, as far as I can see correctly, but when I run rsnapshot configtest it says

'backup  web3:backups/   web3/ - Source directory "web3:backups/ " doesn't exist'

The configuration line I'm using is:

backup  web3:backups/   web3/

It's using an alias in the hosts file. However, I've also tried using the ip address and defining the user name in the command, but neither of these works either (same error). I've also checked and cmd_ssh is enabled and pointing at a valid file.

Does anyone know what might be causing this? It's getting pretty frustrating at this point as I've managed to get most of the backup systems working and I'm sure I've had this working before as well. I've tried it with ssh and rsync, and both seem to view web3:backups as being a valid network location

Answer 1

It would be good to test the syntax of the configuration first.

rsnapshot -c /usr/local/etc/rsnapshot.conf configtest

In my case the problem "Source directory ... doesn't exist" was solved by removal of trailing spaces.

Answer 2

While the docs for rsync say it accepts a host:path argument and uses rsh, I couldn't find evidence in the code for that support.

Before issuing the message you're seeing, it does a bunch of tests on the source argument:

To paraphrase:

if ( is_real_local_abs_path($src) )
elsif ( is_ssh_path($src) )
elsif ( is_anon_rsync_path($src) )
elsif ( is_cwrsync_path($src) )
elsif ( is_linux_lvm_path($src) )
else print "Source directory $src doesn't exist"

None of those patterns are your host:path

If you can, use ssh or an rsync daemon on web3.

For others who get this error on a local filesystem, make sure to follow symlinks all the way when confirming the directory is actually there. For example, I was getting this error for /mydir which pointed to /data/mydir, which existed... but was actually unreadable by root because encfs hides user-mounted dirs even from root, without the -o allow_others option.

Answer 3

From the rsnapshot documentation

In addition to full paths on the local filesystem, you can also backup remote systems using rsync over ssh. If you have ssh installed and enabled (via the cmd_ssh parameter), you can specify a path like:

backup [email protected]:/etc/ example.com/

You need to prepend the remote username@ to the string, so if you're logging in as root then your config file would need to be:

backup  root@web3:backups/   web3/

You possibly also need to use an absolute path (eg, /root/backups/ instead of just backups/)

Answer 4

I encountered the same error, however it turned out to be related to extraneous white space.

I had a line break between the first backup statement and the second. Also, a space was present in the backup declaration rather than just tabs.

Answer 5

In my case, two issues:

• remote server used a custom SSH port; make sure it's in ~/.ssh/config or use ssh_args=-p12345
• rsnapshot seems to refuse accepting relative paths (i.e. that don't start with a slash), e.g. [email protected]:public_html. seeing you tried web3:backups/, you may have been having the same issue