Comment 6 for bug 329722

Yup, that's why. It looks like you did your first few backups as 'hew' and then all subsequent backups as root.

The code to check for this situation examines the ownership of the 'char_to_quote' file, which is the first file that rdiff-backup attempts to access. Since that file is owned by 'hew' and read/write, then rdiff-backup assumes all is well and continues on.

Guess I'll add another round of checks...