Resolved Backup Problem

[Vakarian]

Hi I always get the following error message via the Backup Manager.

Total space: 908.00 GB; Available space: 759.00 GB; Mounted on: /. /bin/tar: unrecognized option '--verbatim-files-from' Try 'tar --help' or 'tar --usage' for more information.


What can I do about it?

Best regards,
Vakarian

 

[Bitpalast]

Find the file that is named "--vebatim-files-from*" in your file system and rename it that it does not start with two hyphens. The two hyphens are interpreted as a parameter to tar, so the compress process fails.

 

[Vakarian]

Thanks for the answer.

This file does not exit.

 

[Bitpalast]

Ah, yes, I see. The "verbatim..." is indeed a parameter. But the cause is still the double hyphens, in that case of a different file.

Try to check the backup log and try to identify the file that is processed before the backup is interrupted. If that is not possible, try to find the "other" file starting with "--" that is not part of the error output. There must be one.

 

[Vakarian]

There are no files with -- at the beginning.

 

[Bitpalast]

What is the output of
# find /var/www/vhosts/* -name "--*"

 

[Vakarian]

no files found

 

[Bitpalast]

Have you checked the names of your databases, the database tables and database users? The issue could be located there. Anything with double hyphens in these structures? For example
# find /var/lib/mysql/* -name "--*"

 

[Vakarian]

Normal as well.

 

[Bitpalast]

This seems quite strange. In that case, it is a totally new issue. What are the last actions logged in
/var/log/plesk/PMM/backup-<timestamp>/backup.log
when the error is logged during the backup process? The log should show more details on the cause.

 

[Bitpalast]

Thank you for providing the log via PM. This does not yield any results. It rather points to the fact that everything is good with the backup, but your tar version does not support the "verbatim-files-from" parameter.

The only thing that I could find is that SOME tar versions prior 1.29 do not support the "verbatim-files-from" parameter, however I don't really know which. Could you please check which tar version your OS has installed?
# tar --version
Maybe do an update of tar?

And while we are at it which OS is installed?
# uname -a
or
# lsb_relase -a
or
# cat /etc/*release

 

[Vakarian]

Debian 8.11 is installed.

Tar Version is
1.27.1

 

[Bitpalast]

On a system with Debian 8.11 the parameter is not supported. However, on all of our production systems it is not supported either, yet we don't have the same error message; actually never had. I cannot test it further, because I don't have any system where I could do it on unless I started to install different OS to check where and how this option works. It is documented in
GNU tar 1.32: 6.3 Reading Names from a File

So probably the only option left is either a bright mind on here or official Plesk support (who are brighter than bright and will most likely be able to figure this one out).

 

[Vakarian]

I installed the tar scripts 1.30 and it works again.

Thanks anyway for the help.