Moonfish issues

I currently backup my RISC OS machines (programs and configurations, data is on a file server) using !DirSync. But this is fairly slow and requires manual intervention. I’d like to back them up automatically using rsync as I do for all my Linux Pi’s.

I’ve tried using !Moonfish 1.09 (22-May-2010) to allow a Linux Pi to mount the RISC OS disc and use rsync to copy everything to the file server. The first issues is NFSv4 is supposed to be supported, but the connection always times out. NFSv2 and NFSv3 do work, but rsync cannot access certain directories.

NFSv3 gives many rsync: readdir("/mnt/backup/druck-riscospi/..."): Input/output error (5) which I suspect is due to large directories, there are also a few rsync: failed to set times on "/mnt/NAS/RISCOS1/...": Invalid argument (22) which look like an issue with untyped files.

NFSv2 is worse with lots of rsync: readdir("/mnt/backup/druck-riscospi/..."): Stale file handle (116) some ERROR: ... failed verification -- update discarded. and file has vanished: ... which I assume is due to filename hash to inode collisions.

Has anyone else seen these problems, or know of a later Moonfish?

I’ve experienced the same issue with NFS4, but I’ve not seen the other problems. But then, I only use it for accessing individual files occasionally rather than a systematic backup. I was thinking about changing my backup arrangements to use Linux like you, so this is a useful warning!

It may be possible to address some of the issues with NFSv3 by increasing the size of the buffer used for directories, but I haven’t looked at the code. Work needs to be done on handling untyped files, as for SunFish (I did start looking at that at one point, but didn’t get a solution working in the limited time available).

I normally have Moonfish running on my Pi so I can share drives to the Linux box, usually the RAM disc. I don’t see the problems you’ve listed, but I don’t share large directories – generally what I do doesn’t stress Moonfish hard.

I believe Alex’s docs say that NFSv4 doesn’t quite work properly, i.e. that’s a known problem.