#3598 Issue closed: 'get_serial_device_speed() called for 'rear-config' which is no character device'

Labels: bug, support / question

spintike opened issue at 2026-04-02 09:40:

ReaR version

Relax-and-Recover 2.7 / Git

Describe the ReaR bug in detail

While trying to implement ReaR in a test environment, I stumbled across the following error message upon executing the command rear -D -v mkbackup:

BUG in /usr/share/rear/lib/serial-functions.sh line 26:
'get_serial_device_speed() called for 'rear-config' which is no character device'

The file "rear-config" is a link to the actual file /etc/rear/local.conf which I created for my convenience.

After a bit of trial-and-error I found that the script serial-functions.sh seems to check the files which are found in the current directory. I do not understand why the script is behaving like that and hope for more insight here.

Platform

Linux x64

OS version

Debian 12, running as privileged LXC on Proxmox 9.1.7

Backup

RSYNC

Storage layout

NAME             KNAME          PKNAME       TRAN   TYPE FSTYPE LABEL  SIZE MOUNTPOINT
/dev/nvme0n1     /dev/nvme0n1                nvme   disk               3.6T 
|-/dev/nvme0n1p1 /dev/nvme0n1p1 /dev/nvme0n1 nvme   part              1007K 
|-/dev/nvme0n1p2 /dev/nvme0n1p2 /dev/nvme0n1 nvme   part                 1G 
`-/dev/nvme0n1p3 /dev/nvme0n1p3 /dev/nvme0n1 nvme   part               3.6T

What steps will reproduce the bug?

executing rear -D -v mkbackup

Workaround, if any

No response

Additional information

I have attached the shell log, the logfile created by that instance as well as my configuration file (please ignore the german comments in it). I am aware that the configuration looks like it has been puzzled together from different sources as it is actually the case. Nevertheless I hope, that the configuration file is not the source of the issue.

rear.log
shell.log
local.conf.txt

gdha commented at 2026-04-03 06:21:

@spintike Do you need with Proxmox a serial console? If not, define USE_SERIAL_CONSOLE=no in the local.conf file.

spintike commented at 2026-04-03 06:58:

@gdha thanks for your reply!

I got rid of the problem yesterday evening by switching to an actual VM and running rear there. With the VM everything is working as intended.

[Export of Github issue for rear/rear.]