[enhancement] Feature Request Email Notifications

For now you can use user-callback script: http://backintime.le-web.org/documentation/usercallback/

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

This is not actually adequate for the purpose, because when the backup fails (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/backintime/+bug/1265499 ), the process exits without calling the callback with code 4. So I *still* didn't get notified that the backup had failed, even though I had the callback set up and waiting.

BTW, this means that this is not so much an enhancement request as a bug report.

Hello Germar,

I'm confused by the email notification I just received: what does "milestone none" mean?

I just got bitten by this bug again: for some reason, the backintime backup directory had ended up with wrong permissions (555 or 550, I don't remember exactly - no idea how it happened: nothing that I'm aware of having done), so every backup silently failed for about 3 weeks until I happened to check.

I've now written the following crude user-callback script to work around the problem; there is surely a better solution to this problem!

   Julian

#! /bin/bash

if [ -z "$USER" ]; then USER=root; fi

if [ $3 = 4 ] # error
then
    message="Backintime died with the following error information:
Profile id = $1
Profile name = $2
Error code = $4
Error message = $5

Just letting you know..."

    echo $message | mail -s "BACKINTIME FAILED" $USER
fi

if [ $3 = 2 ] # "Backup process ends" - this may work!
then
    dircount=$(ls -d /media/JG-BACKUP/${USER}/backintime/erdos/${USER}/1/`date ' +%Y%m%d'`* 2>/dev/null | wc -l)
    if [ $dircount -eq 0 ]
    then
        message="WARNING: Backintime finished, but no directory appears to have been created:
Profile id = $1
Profile name = $2

Just letting you know..."

        echo $message | mail -s "BACKINTIME PROBABLY FAILED" $USER
    else
        dirs=$(ls -d -1 /media/JG-BACKUP/${USER}/backintime/erdos/${USER}/1/`date '+%Y%m%d'`* 2>/dev/null)
        message="Backintime finished, and a directory appears to have been created:
Profile id = $1
Profile name = $2
Directory = $dirs

Just letting you know..."

        echo $message | mail -s "BACKINTIME finished" $USER
    fi
fi

exit 0

Hi Julian,

I'm not yet sure how to implement email notifications and after one year of working on 1.1.0 I really want to release that new major version now. So I skipped this enhancement for now (which means it will not make it into 1.1.0) but I'll pick this up again after the release.

Regards,
Germar

Hi Germar,

It's not even the email notifications which are the core of the problem - those can be wrapped around the backintime script. The heart of the problem is that when backintime fails catastrophically (no backup created at all, for example), it still exits with a zero exit code. This is just Bad.

In common/backintime.py, in the start_app function, we see code like:

        if arg == '--backup' or arg == '-b':
            take_snapshot( cfg, True )
            sys.exit(0)

Instead, if it were something like:

        if arg == '--backup' or arg == '-b':
            ret = take_snapshot( cfg, True )
            sys.exit(ret)

(or perhaps more sophisticated than this), and take_snapshot were tweaked to return a code indicating whether the snapshot succeeded or whether there were minor or serious errors, it would be automatic for cron to warn that there was a failed job.

HTH! Thanks,

   Julian

Hi Julian,

please take a look at version 1.1.0 released two days ago. This will do exactly what you suggested.

Regards,
Germar

Hi Germar,

That's great! Thank you! It will do most of the work, as now the cron job can detect whether the backup has succeeded or not.

   Julian

Quote from Mauro in bug #1434725:
Suggested options:
- send mail only when the snapshot fails or always
- attach snapshot log to the e-mail (only on failure or always)