Bug #16010
closed
AutoConfigBackup scheduled backups always upload even when the configuration has not changed
Added by Jim Pingle 8 months ago.
Updated 4 months ago.
Category:
Auto Configuration Backup
Description
There is code to detect and skip scheduled backups if the configuration has not changed since the last upload, but is is broken in several ways. As a consequence, the scheduled backup always uploads a new revision. Eventually the remote backups are all identical, which is not very useful.
I have a fix for this pending along with other ACB work.
- Status changed from In Progress to Feedback
- % Done changed from 0 to 100
fixed, scheduled backups not running if no config changes were made
tested on:
25.03-BETA (amd64)
built on Wed May 7 16:11:00 UTC 2025
FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT
Tested on
25.07-DEVELOPMENT (amd64)
built on Fri May 9 21:57:00 UTC 2025
FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT
and
25.03-BETA (amd64)
built on Wed May 7 16:11:00 UTC 2025
FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT
It still seems to be uploading scheduled backups even without any change. Looking at the source it appears the changes are merged, but didn't fix it.
I tested on both and I can't reproduce any problem. When I switch to a schedule, say every five minutes (*/5, *, *. *. *) it makes one backup and then no more after that point.
It also logs that it skipped:
/usr/local/sbin/execacb.php: Skipping AutoConfigBackup scheduled backup (no changes since previous backup)
If it's making a backup, something in the configuration must be changing. Have you downloaded two of them and checked a diff between them?
Tried to test this on
25.03-BETA (amd64)
built on Tue May 20 13:55:00 UTC 2025
FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT
but am hitting another bug
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/16204
Going back to
25.03-BETA (amd64)
built on Wed May 7 16:11:00 UTC 2025
FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT
to test and I downloaded the duplicate uploads and did a diff
# diff config-backup-acb-pfSense.home.arpa-20250524103400.xml config-backup-acb-pfSense.home.arpa-20250524103500.xml
269c269
< <time>1748100780</time>
---
> <time>1748100840</time>
It seems the issue may be with the fact that I had it scheduled for every minute. Increasing it to even 2 minutes makes it work as expected. I'm not sure if we should prevent setting a 1 minute backup time or add some code to handle this edge case.
- Status changed from Feedback to Rejected
- Target version deleted (
2.8.0)
- Plus Target Version deleted (
25.03)
The backups are uploaded on a schedule that runs every minute. It might be a race condition of some sort but I don't think it's worth trying to stop. Trying to prevent the user from foot-shooting every possible combination of cron parameters is not going to be viable, there are tons of ways they could mess that up and not all predictable. There isn't any legitimate reason someone would need to set it that low in production or they could just configure it to back up after every change. People using the schedule typically want (much) less frequent backups, not more.
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