Backup Strategy Not Working

[Karl Auer]

On Fri, 2015-07-31 at 19:37 +0100, Graham Watkins wrote:
> tar -cvpzf /media/graham/Expansion\ Drive/graham.tar.gz /home/graham 
> --exclude "/home/graham/VirtualBox VMs"

Looks fine. I doubt that the spaces in the path are a problem in this
case (though if I were you I would reame that drive, because spaces in
paths are nasty).

I just tested file-roller (the program behind "Archive Manager") with a
small archive in a directory with spaces in the name and it worked fine.

> gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated
> I have found that If I run the command from a terminal. the file can be 
> accessed without problems.

What exact command are you using in the terminal?

> To sum up, it seems that I do not have the backup strategy I thought I 
> had and this is somewhat disturbing.

Yes and no. You have confirmed via the command line that the archive
file is OK, and that you can access it. So your data IS backed up in the
archive file and CAN be retrieved, just not with quite the convenience
you'd hoped for :-)

> Does anyone out there have a clue as to what the problem might be and 
> how it can be fixed?

Not me. Random thoughts: How big is the archive file? What format is the
expansion drive? What is the longest path in the archive? What happens
if you create your archive with file-roller instead of that cron job?
What happens if you reduce your $PATH down to just /bin,
run /usr/bin/file-roller and try to open your archive? What happens if
you copy the archive to /tmp and try looking at it with Archive Manager
there?

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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