Apparently successful backup with non-zero exit code

Getting Help
1

Hi folks.
I’m using restic 0.12.1 compiled with go1.16.6 on mint 20.3.

My daily restic backup script warned me it has ended with non-zero code. Details of restic output are given below:

########################
Wed 09 Mar 2022 07:05:07 AM -03
Restic Backup
using parent snapshot 5880921d

Files: 28 new, 0 changed, 31238 unmodified
Dirs: 4 new, 24 changed, 2667 unmodified
Added to the repo: 96.662 MiB

processed 31266 files, 19.897 GiB in 0:32
snapshot 8c98f57f saved
Exit Code: 3
########################

Aside the “Exit Code: 3”, no other warning message.

After 15 minutes my script retried the last operation and everything seemed to finished alright:

########################
Wed 09 Mar 2022 07:20:01 AM -03
Restic Backup
using parent snapshot 8c98f57f

Files: 0 new, 0 changed, 31266 unmodified
Dirs: 0 new, 5 changed, 2690 unmodified
Added to the repo: 10.688 KiB

processed 31266 files, 19.897 GiB in 0:12
snapshot 8d387ba7 saved
Exit Code: 0
########################

Just runned restic-check (without --read-data) and no errors found.

Is there a way I could debug this further to understand what happened?

Thanks in advance and sorry if this is a basic question.

2

From restic help backup:

Exit status is 0 if the command was successful.
Exit status is 1 if there was a fatal error (no snapshot created).
Exit status is 3 if some source data could not be read (incomplete snapshot created).

Since you haven’t showed us what the actual restic command (all of it, including any redirections) looks like, and how/in what context you run it, it’s hard to say what caused it.

But presumably some files could not be read. That’s what the exit code means.

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3

@rawtaz , thanks for your reply.

The exact restic command was

restic -r rclone:ufop:restic backup \ /home/oliveira/Desktop \ /home/oliveira/Documents \ /home/oliveira/Pictures \ /home/oliveira/Work \ /home/oliveira/.local/bin \ /home/oliveira/.local/config \ --tag NB
Not sure if this is what you needed.

I was wondering if restic saves some log in my system where I could take a look… anyways, I have no idea why some files could not be read.

Well, thanks again.

p.s. – This ufop:restic is my Google Drive remote.

4

Afaik this can also happen if you have any transient folders, e.g. a temporary file is deleted while you’re getting the backup.

5

Indeed. This is absolutely reasonable.

6

restic does not store any log files. Judging from the output your log files could be missing stderr. Getting the exit code 3 without restic printing a corresponding error message is not possible.

7

You are right. I just noted the missing 2>&1 in my log file redirection. Thank you very much.

8

So the command you pasted earlier was not the full command you are actually running in the end?

9

Well, now I understand what you meant by full command. And the answer then is no. I’m sorry about that.

I had an anacrontab like this: 7 5 restic.daily /path/to/restic-script.sh >> /path/to/restic-dell.log and restic-script.sh has that command I pasted earlier. Now I have added the aforementioned 2>&1 in restic’s output redirection.

Again, my bad.

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