Who or what was responsible?

[uthappam]

Since helpful people on this forum wrote this for me nearly four years ago, I have been using it roughly once each month:

Code: Select all

rsync -uav /home/albert "/media/albert/Expansion Drive"

However, when some days back I used it after moving to the recently released Debian 10.1, it ended with a "no space left" message. Investigation showed that, beside the existing "albert" tree, an "albert1" tree had been created -- apparently with the same structure and content. Also, the external USB hard drive was no longer recognised by the system.

Was all this caused by a change in Debian -- or in rsync -- or by a mistake I made? The original discussion can be seen at
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=125672

[tynman]

The rogue directory, albert1, may be unrelated to the "no space" error. Most likely, the main problem is the "the external USB hard drive was no longer recognised by the system".

When the external hard drive isn't mounted to "/media/albert/Expansion Drive", the rsync command will write to some other hard drive - probably to your root drive, although that depends on how your system is set up.

Do you know how the external hard drive was getting mounted before the upgrade to Debian 10? (It might also be interesting and/or helpful to know how you upgraded to Debian 10.)

[uthappam]

The rsync command was issued at the command line after the external drive had become visible in Thunar. It became unrecognisable after it had stopped with an error message. Debian 10.1 was installed from a DVD.

[golinux]

I always do a "dry run" before backing up with grsync. More than once, I had plugged in the drive but forgotten to mount it so in the dry run, new folders were created to receive the data. After mounting the drive, everything worked normally.

[uthappam]

Thank you. Not the problem here: I learnt very soon that the drive needed to be mounted.

[golinux]

Thank you. Not the problem here: I learnt very soon that the drive needed to be mounted.

Me too but sometimes I forget.

[wizard10000]

I use "if mountpoint" to insure backup drive is actually mounted before running my backup job. Looks like this -

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

if mountpoint -q /media/internal
  then
     # backup commands go here
  fi
exit 0

Hope this helps -

[uthappam]

Thank you, Wizard. It may be best to take this precaution. At this time the small drive is with the young chap who handles hardware matters for me. He said he knows someone who may be able to get into the casing and get the thing going again.