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Backup copies no files with v10 - repeatedly


Don Lee

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Using v10 now. I have seen this behavior several times now, on a "v9" client (9.0.2 (102), Mac OS X 10.6), and now a 6.x client on Mac OS X 10.4.

 

Start with an empty media set, and a client (source) that has not been backed up. Use a favorite with some content on the source, like /MacintoshHD/Users/. Do a straight up, no media-action backup of that source/favorite.

 

You can run it repeatedly and it will copy no files, completing successfully. Each time it only runs a few seconds. It doesn't even try.

 

I just switched to doing the /MacintoshHD instead, and it's scanning. I'll try backing up the favorite and see if it at least scans the directory before declaring victory and quitting.

 

This appears to be new in v10.x, but I don't think I ever tried backing up a favorite of something

that had not been backed up before to an empty media set with the v9- engine.

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I don't know. This problem appears to occur only on the first attempt. I would have to set it up again to try it. After the backup of the whole disk, I'm pretty sure the favorite is visible and browsable, but I didn't check. (and that machine is a laptop, and has gone away for now)

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I'm having this problem right now. Version 10.0.0.1(105) with a client on 6.3.029. Each time I try and manually run a backup of a folder that is a favorite it backs up 0 files and says that no files need to be copied which I can assure you is not the case. I believe this is also happening to some users for whom I've set up their Users directory as a favorite and despite never being backed up I got no files need to be copied errors. Backing up the entire hard drive works.

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Can you browse the favorite folder and see content from the engine/console machine?

 

Yes, everything looks as it should when I preview what is going to get backed up but for some reason the scanning never happens it just says the backup completed successfully with 0 files needing to be backed up.

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RS Backup-no deskB.tifflocation of deskB.tiffI have a similar if not identical problem and it's definitely not client related. I run a script that backs up the RS info (.dat and catalogs etc. located in Library/AppSupport...). One of the catalog files is not getting backed up (no client involved since this is on the RS engine machine), but the others are.

 

System is 10.1.0 (187) the beta build suggested to fix another problem with grooming that I was having.

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I ran the same script manually that had missed one of the RS catalog files, and that time it got it. Not sure what's going on here, but it certainly seems like there's a bug in there somewhere. Subsequent runs of the script are failing to back it up with error -1100 (invalid handle)-whatever that means.

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I read some of the info available on ISA, and the more I think about it, the less I am comfortable with it.

 

It may well be working as designed, but my backups have timestamps, and it is often important to know that a file was created BEFORE a certain backup ran. If there is a lag between when a file is created/modified, and the time it is "seen" for backup by Retro, I can't trust that the files on a volume at point A in time will be backed up by a backup run at point B in time. (B > A) Practically speaking, I'm not completely clear on what this means, but it doesn't sound good.

 

 

I used the directions here: http://forums.retros...expensive-docs/ to disable ISA.

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Having disabled retroISA on the server, I find that the backups on one of my Mac OS X 10.5 PowerPC machines is copying almost all of the files on the sources every night! It's not ALL o the volumes, just two of them. /Users and a folder on a second disk.

 

I have now re-enabled ISA on the server.

 

Hoping to see some sort of news on this....

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I saw another case this evening of trouble. In this case, the server was backing up several "favorites" to the same media set - "v9-daily-user", which is used for daily backups of small parts of filesystems that change frequently.

 

In this case one of these folders/favorites contains my emai folder, which changes frequently all day long. Earlier in the evening, I had reset this media set. In fact, I chnged it from "file" to a "disk" set. It was empty.

 

The first and second backups to the media set worked. (scheduled, not proactive) The third was a backup of the folder that contains (among other things) my email. It copied zero files.

 

I'll keep an eye on this, but it's not right. Something is seriously wrong, and it needs to be fixed.

 

Client is a PPC Mac OS X 10.5.8 machine running client 6.3.029

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I now have two machines, both running Mac OS X 10.4.x. One with client 6.2.234, and the other with 6.3.039. Both

had their media set recycled for the monthly rotation, and since then have been backed up. There were ZERO files stored to the media set. This was true on the entire disk, and on the subfolders (favorites) that I also back up on one of those machines.

 

Whatever this is, it's real, and it's a serious problem for some subset of machines. I don't have reliable backup as of today with Retro 10 on these two machines.

 

Server/engine is 10.0.1 (105)

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I haven't seen anything like that with non verson 10 clients although I'm running a beta which I think had a fix for backing up older clients. I do have one machine that I haven't removed instant scan from and it's backed up zero files for the last three attempts. You should contact Retrospect support and ask for the link to the beta version.

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I just checked on my setup, and I had several volumes/favorites on two machines that were running daily backups and all were backing up zero files on each run. I know that files are changing in all these places, so this is clearly wrong.

 

I started by remembering that if I "forced" a backup of a few files, it would somehow fix it, so I tried doing the backup assistant routine, and selecting just a couple of files manually for backup, and running the script.

 

Didn't work. I got "no files needed to be copied". I tried this a bunch of times (10? 15?) on various volumes/favorites and media sets. In most cases, no files would be copied.

 

I finally got frustrated, and killed the engine to restart it. I had gotten one of my "forced backups" to actually back up data,

and it was half way done copying data. I hit the "stop" button on the console, and then when it was done, I stopped the engine, and re-started it.

 

I then re-forced the humor backup (the machine that I interrupted to re-start the engine). Even though there were 40K files left to copy when I interrupted the previous backup, the bckup run said "no files to copy" and stored snapshot file of "69KB".

 

I then killed the *client* SW (hold down cmd-key and press stop ,then start on the client) - and re-ran the same backup.

 

This time it did as I expected, backing up the 40K files it had previously missed.

 

I hope these data points are helpful. Something is not right.

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My "EIMS 3.3" favorite folder backed up zero files today. Client is running Mac OS X 10.4, and the Retro client is 6.2.234.

 

Interestingly, if I go tothe "past backups" pane, and try to browse the files, it shows the top level folder, and it's empty.

When I "retrieve" a previous backup (with a non-zero file count), I can browse the files.

 

Busted. Still hoping for some news on this.

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Yes, install the current beta http://kb.retrospect.com/articles/en_US/Retrospect_Article/grx-assert

 

Update the v10 clients and then disable instant scan on all of them.

 

launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.retrospect.retroisa.plist

rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.retrospect.retroisa.plist

rm /Library/Application\ Support/Retrospect/ConfigISA.bak

rm /Library/Application\ Support/Retrospect/ConfigISA.dat

rm /Library/Application\ Support/Retrospect/retro_isa.ini

rm /Library/Application\ Support/Retrospect/retroISA_log.utx

rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/Retrospect/RetroISAScans

rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/Retrospect/RetrospectInstantScan.bundle

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