Cannot Backup my Development Instance (Fails)
The discussion revolves around an issue with backing up a Discourse development instance on a Macbook Pro. ParticlProject shared a log showing a “Back up Failed” error message. tgxworld identified the issue as related to a commit in the Discourse GitHub repository, which raised the tar version requirement.
The solution involved upgrading tar to at least version 1.23. simon suggested installing gnu-tar with Homebrew and adding it to the PATH in the .bash_profile. ParticlProject confirmed that this solution worked.
The conversation also touched on the reason behind the change, with pfaffman explaining that it was intended to prevent file changes during backups. However, pfaffman also suggested reverting the change or testing the available tar version.
simon pointed out that installing Homebrew is part of the Mac setup guide, and suggested updating the beginner’s guide to include the installation of gnu-tar for compressing backups.
Hey,
First time setting up Discourse here! I’m trying to backup my development instance of Discourse as I am ready to host it online, but when going in Admin>Backups>Backup, it says Backup Failed. Here’s my log: [2018-07-12 20:48:43] 'cryptoguard' has started the backup![2018-07-12 20:48:4 - Pastebin.com
What’s going wrong here? The instance is installed locally on my Macbook Pro and I want to make a backup to host it on some server.
Hmm it looks like this is related to
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/83110a1a812140382167e8f5339c8bde3ee6610d
[2018-07-12 20:48:45] EXCEPTION: Failed to archive uploads.
tar: Option --warning=no-file-changed is not supported
Usage:
List: tar -tf <archive-filename>
Extract: tar -xf <archive-filename>
Create: tar -cf <archive-filename> [filenames...]
Help: tar --help
Can you try upgrading tar to at least 1.23?
What worked for me on a mac was installing gnu-tar with Homebrew and then adding it to my PATH in my .bash_profile.
Hmm @pfaffman can you confirm why this change was needed? It looks like we raised the bar on our tar version requirement a lot.
I’m on version 1.30 
That did the trick! Thanks a lot mate 
Hmm. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
I can’t recall the details, but apparently I was having backups fail because something changed while the backup was happening. The only way that I can think of for files to change during a backup is for something to get moved to tombstone, or a file is being uploaded when tar starts?
I suspect that another solution (other than for luck during a backup) is to turn on read only during backup.
Having to install homebrew to make development work on the Mac does seem onerous. I have been using the gnu utilities for decades, so I didn’t think about them not being available on the Mac.
I guess the simple thing is to revert my change. Or we could test which version of tar is available.
Installing Homebrew is a part of the Mac setup guide. If gnu-tar needs to be used for compressing backups, then we just need to update Install Discourse on macOS for development.
Oh! Then it’s not so much to ask after all!