Bash script clobbers something vital (lucid)

[Kevin O'Gorman]

On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 6:36 AM, J <dreadpiratejeff at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2011 at 03:47, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> Have a look in syslog and see what are the first errors that appear
>> there.  No need to get it to fail again for this, you can go back to
>> the previous log, assuming you know when it happened.  Also if you run
>> the disc utilities do you see any errors noted in the SMART data?
>>
>> Are you doing anything else when it fails (plugging/unplugging
>> additional usb devices for example)?
>>
>> Colin
>
> Additionally, when the script gets to the point where it starts trying
> to md5sum things, have all the other operations truly finished?  133GB
> is a lot of data to move, especially over USB.  Are you positive that
> all the data is finished being written to the disks at that point?
> Perhaps adding in something ridiculous like 'sleep 30m' before you
> start the md5sums would point this out.  Since the backup takes 4+
> hours, an extra 30 minutes isn't going to hurt things in the grand
> scheme of things.  Anyway, it's a longshot, but worth considering. Of
> course, 30m is just an arbitrary time, adjust as you see fit.

That's a job for sync(1), not sleep, but I'd regard either one as a
workaround at best.  As I noted elsewhere, I may have to resort to
sync but if I do, I'll be submitting a bug as well.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD