tklbam error

[DocCyblade]

Hello! Long time user been a long time since last bug report!

Fresh install of turnkey-nodejs-18.0-bookworm-amd64 Setup my tklbam and tried to do a backup and get the below error

Comparing current system state to the base state in the backup profile
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Save list of new packages:

  cat > /TKLBAM/newpkgs << EOF 
  linux-image-6.1.0-38-amd64
  EOF

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/tklbam-backup", line 510, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/bin/tklbam-backup", line 443, in main
    opt_resume, True, dump_path if dump_path else "/")
  File "/usr/lib/tklbam/backup.py", line 237, in __init__
    self._create_extras(extras_paths, profile_paths, backup_conf)
  File "/usr/lib/tklbam/backup.py", line 175, in _create_extras
    conf.overrides.fs)
  File "/usr/lib/tklbam/backup.py", line 111, in _write_whatchanged
    changes = whatchanged(dirindex, paths)
  File "/usr/lib/tklbam/changes.py", line 258, in whatchanged
    di_saved = DirIndex(di_path)
  File "/usr/lib/tklbam/dirindex.py", line 89, in __init__
    rec = DirIndex.Record.fromline(line)
  File "/usr/lib/tklbam/dirindex.py", line 51, in fromline
    raise Error("bad index record: " + line)
dirindex.Error: bad index record: /opt/node-examples/practicalnode/chapter1/media/Homebrew Install On Request Events

Looks like there is a bad file here /opt/node-examples/practicalnode/chapter1/media/

Removed the file but it still errors out.

[JedMeister]

Thanks for the report @DocCyblade.

It seems a little strange that it still errors with the file removed. I wonder if the issue also exists in the backup profile itself?

I'll need to have a closer look, but my suspicion is that it's to do with the way py2 handles strings - by default all strings are "binary strings" internally (i.e. no encoding), but when writing to a text file they are silently converted to encoded text strings (using the system encoding).

As an aside:

FYI, assuming that my guess is right, in py3 weird issues like this are avoided (or at least easier to debug) because binary and text strings are explicitly defined.

As a bit of a tangential point, in discussion with @OnGle we realised that in the py3 port of tklbam (still in progress with no ETA... :( ) we should look at using a binary format for the dirindex. I won't go into details here, but it would help us to minimise a whole class of issues.

[OnGle]

Yeah I agree, it does seem like there might already be a corrupted line in an existing backup and it's only erroring now when trying to load that to perform the diff.

It looks like the error is in the dirindex, which is currently a text file. Might be able to get more info by looking at the dirindex file, searching for the filename in question and then comparing that to surrounding lines.

[DocCyblade]

@OnGle You are correct. I removed the file and the entry in the /var/lib/tklbam/profile/dirindex and that did the trick. Was able to do the backup.

[OnGle]

Glad that fixed the issue, although the way it's broken in particular seems very strange.