Can't get BackInTime to run

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#1

I can’t get BackInTime to run correctly either as root or non-root. I have an external hard drive which is set to always mount on boot that I want to use.
If I try to schedule my backups without using root access, when I select anacron (my PC doesn’t run all day and night) and click “OK”, I get the message

Can’t find anacron.
Are you sure anacron is installed ?
If not you should disable daily anacron backups

I have installed cronie-anacron.
When I try to run anacron from the command line, I get

Absolute path to ‘anacron’ is ‘/usr/sbin/anacron’, so running it may require superuser privileges (eg. root).

.

If I try to set up the backups as root, everything seems to go fine, but there are no regular backups running ever. BackInTime doesn’t even create the cron files in cron.daily! I can only take snapshots manually, which is less convenient than just drag-and-dropping my files.

#2

anacron is a cron like processor so must be started as a service. I guess it would run at the system level and not the user level

#3

I know what anacron is. This doesn’t help at all.

#4

Works fine here on 13.2 in a VM.

What distribution version are you using and what GUI? Did you use the default openSUSE Backintime packages?

#5

I’m using 13.2 with KDE. Backintime is 1.0.34-3.1.9-noarch from vendor openSUSE. Same for backintime-kde. Cronie-anacron is 1.4.12-56.3.1-x86_64 from vendor openSUSE, same for cronie.

#6

Thing is is it running as a service? It is not something you would run as a user it may need a kick start to start the service.

#7

Cron is listed as enabled and active in the services manager, “systemctl list-unit-files” lists it as enabled. No word on anacron though.

#8

Well cron is different it is the normal cron job super.

Cronie may be the key perhaps that needs started check in Yast-Services manager

#9

Try firing up backintime-kde4 or backintime-gnome depending on your DE from a terminal window and it should dump error and informational messages there.

It’ll also output any cron changes it tries to make and possible errors related to it. I can’t replicate the problem because I simply installed the kde4 version and it works like a charm out of the box.

#10

No specific error messages. The entire output following the startup message is:

backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-excel.addin.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-word.template.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-word.template.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12" 
backintime(11046) KMimeTypeRepository::parents: "/usr/share/mime/subclasses"  refers to unknown mimetype  "application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slide.macroEnabled.12" 
Check snapshot folder: /mnt/external/snapshots
Clearing system Back In Time entries
Clearing anacrontab
Profile: Main profile
Automatic backup: Daily (anacron)


 The last five lines appear upon clicking "OK" after selecting "Daily (anacron)", together with the GUI message I mentioned in the first post.
#11

Still no working backup solution. Furthermore, upon issuing “systemctl start cronie” as root, I get the following error:

Failed to start cronie.service: Unit cronie.service failed to load: No such file or directory.

YaST2 shows cronie and cronie-anacron as installed.

#12

On Mon 16 Feb 2015 07:56:01 PM CST, unspecifiedusername wrote:

Still no working backup solution. Furthermore, upon issuing “systemctl
start cronie” as root, I get the following error:
Code:

Failed to start cronie.service: Unit cronie.service failed to load:
No such file or directory. --------------------
YaST2 shows cronie and cronie-anacron as installed.

Hi
That would be correct since it’s called cron.service

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.36-38-default
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#13

How would I get anacron to run as a service then? This seems to be one of the issues raised in the replies.

#14

Hi
There is no service it’s configured to run look at /etc/cron.hourly/0anacron and /etc/anacrontab and probably the man pages for anacron and anacrontab. I don’t use it, but I do use fwbackups which adds user cronjobs.

#15

anacron is in /usr/sbin/. Standard user’s path does not include that location. One fix is to put a link in /usr/bin/ to /usr/sbin/anacron.
Regards,
Howard