I can look at and edit my backuppc configuration via the web browser by going to 'localhost/backuppc' and everything seems to work just fine but after I mount my external hard drive to /var/lib/backuppc I get the following error in my browser.

Error: Unable to connect to BackupPC server
This CGI script (/backuppc/index.cgi) is unable to connect to the BackupPC server on mint-desktop port -1.
The error was: unix connect: Connection refused.
Perhaps the BackupPC server is not running or there is a configuration error. Please report this to your Sys Admin.

Before mounting to /bar/lib/backuppc I made sure to copy the files from /var/lib/backuppc/ with the -a option to the external hard drive so that backup would be seeing all the same files that it's use to seeing with the same permissions, owner and group but as soon as I do this I get the above. Any ideas? Thanks.

Unmount /var/lib/backuppc and then look in /var/lib/backuppc/ and see what't in it.
I suspect you overwrote something backuppc expects in /var/lib/backuppc/

On second I think you broke it with the custom file copy to the external drive.
Why are you mounting there?
A very odd place to mount a drive.

What does the documentation say?
What are the permissions:ownwership on /var/lib/backuppc/ before and after the mount?

On the last paragraph of my post I explained that I made sure to copy with the `cp -a` command to insure that all the permissions were the same as well as the owner and the group. So I mounted the external hdd to a temporary location and then I ran `cp -a /var/lib/backuppc /home/user/mount` (/home/user/mount/ being the temporary directory for the HDD) I then unmounted from that temporary directory and mounted on /var/lib/backuppc because you can't change the filepath of the backups in backuppc. I later took a closer look at the settings on the web interface but I noticed that it's showing /var/lib/backuppc/pc/localhost/0 as the backup path so I copied with permissions, owner & group from that directory instead and then mounted to /var/lib/backuppc/localhost/0. Now backuppc starts without complaint and I can click 'Start Full Backup' and it asks me if I'm sure, after clicking yes it seems to accept but upon further investigation nothing is actually happening. I left it alone all night and ran `df -h` in the morning and nothing has changed on any partition, directory or device in my computer. I would have prefered to ditch backuppc a while ago for another option but I can't for a few ridiculous reasons.

Does backuppc log its activities?