backup to external drive: no check if drive is mounted can cause root partition to fill up
I set up a weekly full rdiff backup of system files and user data to an external usb drive with the appropriate fstab configuration so plugging the drive would result in the drive being automatically mounted at the right mountpoint.
Problem is backupninja doesn't offer the option to check if the destination is a mountpoint, so when the user failed to plug the external drive the backup process just went on and filled up the ssd based system partition until the computer crashed and rendered the system unusable and impossible to fix remotely (readonly root filesystem).
Bypassing backupninja helpers and using a custom shell script, there is a workaround I found at http://duncanlock.net/blog/2013/08/27/comprehensive-linux-backups-with-etckeeper-backupninja/ but this defeats the point of having helpers in the first place.
here's the example shell script from the previously mentioned web page:
if mountpoint -q /mnt/backups then info "backup drive is mounted, backing up" rsync -vaxAX --delete --ignore-errors --exclude '.cache/' /home/ /mnt/backups/ else fatal "backup drive is not mounted, quitting" fi
Given the prevalence of external drives, I'm surprised that backupninja is missing this obvious and much needed step.
(from redmine: created on 2014-08-18)