Advice on backup method

[Nils Kassube]

Chas IRONS wrote:
> I have used the Backup front end for deja-dup each month-end many
> times but this time it would not switch to a new flash drive. The
> Software Centre also had many bad comments. So I installed Back in
> Time with its recommended default settings but it failed with many
> pages of errors about Evolution files. My Evolution folders have 65MB
> of history about banking, medical,tax and investment transactions
> that I must keep.
> 
> The first few errors in the log below were followed by 10 pages of
> Evolution errors: Please advise me!
> [E] Error: rsync: symlink
> "/media/chas/BCA6-796F/backintime/Charles-PC/chas/1/new_snapshot/backu
> p/home/chas/.config/opera/SingletonCookie" -> "11075476278167463458"
> failed: Operation not permitted (1)

Did you reformat the flash drive with ext2/3/4? If you didn't do that, 
the drive is formatted with FAT32 or maybe NTFS. Both FAT32 and NTFS are 
not compatible with Linux symlinks and therefore you would get the error 
message above.

IMHO you have two options: Either format the flash drive with one of the 
ext file systems - then you can use Linux symlinks. If you want to use 
the flash drive for Windows machines also, you should rather change your 
backup method to use tar archives - they can be stored on FAT32 / NTFS 
file systems.


Nils