[rdiff-backup-users] unreadable files

[q83zi5r02]

I've been using rdiff-backup for about six months to back up my home machine
to one at work.  Both linux machines, both running version 12.3.  Recently
there was a hardware problem on the home machine, resulting in disk
corruption.  The corrupted disk got backed up before I realized what had
happened, and subsequently rdiff-backup stopped working.  I've now got it
going again, and I *think* I understand what the problem was.

The corrupted disk had some files and directories with nonsensical permissions
- part of which was that they weren't readable by the owner.  Since I was
running rdiff-backup as root, it was able to read the files at the home end.
I'm not sure whether it actually copied the files to the backup archive, or
just changed the permissions at the archive end, but the result was archive
files with no read permission for the owner.  The owner at the archive end was
an ordinary user, not root. Subsequent runs of rdiff-backup then failed,
apparently because it couldn't read the files.  I eventually got it going
again by tracking down all the files with no read permissions and changing
the permissions at both ends.

I've since looked at the changelog for version 13, which says "Regressing and
restoring as non-root user now works on directories that contain unreadable
files and directories as long as they are owned by that user".  Does that
cover my case?  Some of the files were owned by root at the home end, and the
user at the archive end doesn't exist at the home end.  I guess I should
upgrade to version 13 anyway.

Thanks,

Stephen Isard

real email address
S
dot
Isard
at
XXXXXXXX