On Sun, 1 Aug 2021 at 07:24, Eyal Lebedinsky <fedora(a)eyal.emu.id.au> wrote:
As of June I get these errors in my backup log:
gzip: stdin: warning: file timestamp out of range for gzip format
Trouble zipping file, storing uncompressed
I think the first line is the problem, the second is the backup (afio)
responding.
I checked my backup logs and the first time this came up (since 2015) is
at the end of June on two
f34 machines.
I don't remember much about afio. Given the age of afio, it would be the
prime
suspect.
gzip can store the file date in the archive, and (per
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=950519)
supports dates from 1970-01-01 00:00:01 UTC through 2106-02-07 06:28:15
UTC. As the Debian
bug report notes, gzip may be hitting a limit in the kernel or a library.
There should be a way to determine which files in the backup are
compressed. Can you generate
a list of the backup contents with timestamps and look for extreme dates?
For each file, afio asks gzip to compress it and deliver the result using
a pipe back to afio which then
appends it to the backup.
What is the cause of this error? Is there really a file with a bad
timestamp or does gzip have
some issues?
So far the only online mention I found is for an old logrotate problem.
I should say that I am running the backup on a live (though quiescent)
system I expect to encounter issues.
- Above, I figure that afio still backs up the file, uncompressed, so not
a big issue.
- Another situation is when a file is updated while processing. This is a
common issue with files that
have data appended regularly, which produces a different error:
gzip: stdin: file size changed while zipping
which I understand and can live with.
This is f34, fully updated.
It is possible that some software creates files with "funny" timestamps and
sets a correct
value when closing the file.
--
George N. White III