Failure during long SFTP backups

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HPG
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue May 05, 2020 2:05 pm

Failure during long SFTP backups

Post by HPG »

Please forgive this basic question -- I'm new to Backup4all, so there's a lot of information about it I haven't found yet. I'm doing an initial (full) backup to a remote SFTP server, which is obviously a very slow process. I've set the connection timeout to very long, but there's still a good chance that something will go wrong during the backup phase -- e.g. the server goes down, a machine reboots, the app is closed accidentally, etc. When this happens it seems that I have to start the whole process again from the beginning. Is there a way of getting Backup4all to remember where it's got to with a lengthy backup so it can pick up from there when the backup is restarted?

Adrian (Softland)
Posts: 1914
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:46 pm

Re: Failure during long SFTP backups

Post by Adrian (Softland) »

Hi,

You cannot resume a backup if the connection is interrupted or the computer is restarted.
In such a case, you could run the first large full backup locally in splits of 2 GB and upload them to FTP later (using your FTP client).
Then change the backup destination to FTP and continue with increments (which are smaller).

Here is an article about how to do that:
https://www.backup4all.com/backup-strat ... tp-kb.html

HPG
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue May 05, 2020 2:05 pm

Re: Failure during long SFTP backups

Post by HPG »

Thanks -- that's very helpful.

Is there a technical reason why the .bkc file can't be created at the beginning of the job and updated as each zip file is successfully added to the destination? So that if the backup fails, when the job is restarted the catalog file can be read to see how far the previous job had gone before failing? I'm guessing that as more and more users choose remote destinations for their backups, the problem of having to restart failed full backups must be getting more common.

Adrian (Softland)
Posts: 1914
Joined: Wed Dec 16, 2009 12:46 pm

Re: Failure during long SFTP backups

Post by Adrian (Softland) »

Hi,

This is how the application was designed to work. Changing it to work in another way means to change the entire application behavior. Of course there would be other disadvantages using the way you suggested, but at this moment the solution for such cases would be to save the catalog from time to time, during the backup.
I will note that in our Wishlist.

HPG
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue May 05, 2020 2:05 pm

Re: Failure during long SFTP backups

Post by HPG »

Yes, I wondered about saving it from time to time as a workaround. Thanks for thinking about it.

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