Had same problem. Got newer rdiff-backup which handles filesystem problem gracefully and then fixed said filesystem problem.
I discovered that my root cron backup script which uses rdiff-backup had been failing for months for the same worrysome reason that rdiff-backup had a problem with a directory it was backing up as root. Confirmed running manually: ....... File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/rpath.py", line 386, in make_file_dict statblock = os.lstat(filename) PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: b'/home/robert/.cache/doc' During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/rdiff-backup", line 32, in <module> rdiff_backup.Main.error_check_Main(sys.argv[1:]) File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/rdiff_backup/Main.py", line 390, in error_check_Main .......... I could not remove the empty directory as the owner or as root. As a workaround, I got a later version of rdiff-backup which continues "gracefully" after encountering the above problem. sudo apt -y install python3-pip python3-setuptools python3-pylibacl python3-pyxattr rdiff-backup --version sudo apt -y remove rdiff-backup sudo pip3 install rdiff-backup rdiff-backup --version rdiff-backup above is in /usr/local/bin After a few reboots + a manual fsck -V -f on the partition of interest (/home) which found nothing, rdiff-backup ran clean and I was finally able to remove the offending directory. I was expecting fsck to have run on the partition of concern at boot and fixed something but there is no evidence it ran. Only keeps last boot? more /run/initramfs/fsck.log -------------------- Log of fsck -C -a -T -t ext4 /dev/sdd5 Tue Dec 28 15:30:07 2021 /dev/sdd5: clean, 349494/4276224 files, 5482131/17089536 blocks Tue Dec 28 15:30:07 2021 ---------------- GUI Disk utility says disk is ok probably via smartmon. Will run short test maually. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1875163 Title: rdiff-backup crashes when running backup To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/rdiff-backup/+bug/1875163/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs