[SWLUG] Rsync Problems

[Justin Mitchell]

On Wed, 2010-07-28 at 08:14 +0100, Jon Reynolds wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I have set up an old laptop to act as a small home server at home, the
> idea being that it is quiet and low powered to be left on basically
> 24/7.
> 
> Storage was an issue as I wanted it to act as a file server for music
> and somewhere to store my photos, videos etc. So in the end I have 2
> external aluminium USB enclosures for 3.5" HDDs.
> 
> The problem with this is that they are 'on' constantly as there doesn't
> seem to be any way of powering them down after a period of inactivity.
> Therefore they are HOT all the time and I am concerned this may be
> killing them.
> 
> I have set up a basic script to backup my web server to this home server
> once a week using rsync. I get an email from cron to show me the results
> of the backup and I seem to be getting increasing amounts of errors.
> 
> Here is a selection of some of the errors from the rsync output:
> 
> rsync:
> readlink_stat("/home/jonr/media/.jcrdev/home-backup/Maildir/.SWLUG/cur/1277284768.5371_1.jcrdevelopments.com:2,")
> failed: Input/output error (5)

does rather sound like disk errors.

if it is, there should also be messages in that machines dmesg log.

also check the state of the hard drive using 'smartctl -a /dev/sda' or
whatever the drive device is.  pay particular attention to these values
5 Reallocated Sector Count
197 Current Pending Sector
198 Offline Uncorrectable

as any significant numbers in those tend to indicate the disk is on its
last legs.