schedule.time should specify 'hour' but seems to specify 'minute'

[Whytey]

Using backintime version 1.3.2 from the command line only. No GUI installed.

root@server1:~/backintime# backintime --version
backintime 1.3.2

I have three profiles. I intended to run profile 1 and 2 daily at 1am and 2am respectfully. Profile 3 should be run every Sunday at 3am.

Config snippet:

profile1.name=filesystem
profile1.schedule.mode=20
profile1.schedule.time=1

profile2.name=databases
profile2.schedule.mode=20
profile2.schedule.time=2

profile3.name=containers
profile3.schedule.mode=30
profile3.schedule.time=03
profile3.schedule.weekday=7

When I run check_config, it goes through the process of creating the crontab entries, but seems to specify the times as 1, 2 and 3 minutes past midnight:

root@server1:~/backintime# crontab -l
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin

#Back In Time system entry, this will be edited by the gui:
1 0 * * * /usr/bin/nice -n19 /usr/bin/ionice -c2 -n7 /usr/bin/backintime --config /root/backintime/backintime.config backup-job >/dev/null 2>&1
#Back In Time system entry, this will be edited by the gui:
2 0 * * * /usr/bin/nice -n19 /usr/bin/ionice -c2 -n7 /usr/bin/backintime --profile-id 2 --config /root/backintime/backintime.config backup-job >/dev/null 2>&1
#Back In Time system entry, this will be edited by the gui:
3 0 * * 7 /usr/bin/nice -n19 /usr/bin/ionice -c2 -n7 /usr/bin/backintime --profile-id 3 --config /root/backintime/backintime.config backup-job >/dev/null 2>&1

Seems like a bug to me.

Cheers,
Whytey

[aryoda]

Did you create the profile manually? And what does the BiT GUI show as schedule time for this config/profile?

IMHO the time is a number but NOT the hour but a decimal-codes system of the form:

hhmm

So 1 o'clock should be 'profile2.schedule.time=200' (for hour = 2 and minutes = 00).

See the code for this: https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/blob/master/common/config.py#L1507

Please set the Hour of the schedule in the BiT GUI under "Settings" and check how the schedule.time is modified then
(I hope as I found it in the code).

[Whytey]

Hi,

I am not running the GUI (I am on a headless server so hand-crafted my own config). Your investigation into the code seem sound so I updated my config and it does seem to have fixed things perfectly, thankyou.

I will leave this ticket open though, since I think there is still a defect (but in the documentation, now), since I used the man pages to guide me and that seems to indicate that schedule.time should be in the range of 0-24 - https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jammy/man1/backintime-config.1.html

Thanks for your help.

[aryoda]

@Whytey Thanks for reporting, backtesting and clarifying the issue, I fully agree that this is no bug in the code of BiT but a documentation problem in the man page file https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/blob/master/common/man/C/backintime-config.1#L147

@Codeberg-AsGithubAlternative-buhtz I could create a pull request but I guess it is easier for you to fix the documentation directly since you have commit rights on the repo.

Instead of

Only valid for profile.schedule.mode >= 20 ... Only valid for profile.schedule.mode >= 20

which is wrong since hour and minute in the source code is also used for the modes WEEK, MONTH and YEAR
but not for REPEATEDLY = 25 and UDEV = 27 (even though their modes are also above 20!).

https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/blob/master/common/config.py#L1576

I suggest to modify the backintime-config man page like this:

.IP "\fIprofile<N>.schedule.time\fR" 6
.RS
Type: int       Allowed Values: 0-2400
.br
Position-coded number with the format "hhmm" to specify the hour and minute the cronjob should start (eg. 2015 means a quarter past 8 pm).
.br
Only valid for \fIprofile<N>.schedule.mode\fR = 20 (daily), 30 (weekly), 40 (monthly) and 80 (yearly)
.PP
Default: 0
.RE

You can test the correct rendering of the man page with

man -l backintime-config.1

[buhtz]

Awesome. ;)

I don't have commit rights yet. But I work on it. ;) I would suggest you open a PR and mention @emtiu in the comment. He has the rights currently.