2938dc23-e57b-4af5-8718-1b4184949c66 Posted March 17, 2011 Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 Hi all, Retrospect has been working well for me for a while now; it's been stable and I've had no serious problems. I'm backing up to disk media sets. In particular, I have a disk media set on a CIFS share (and I'm the one who posted about the issue using Samba as the host for the share). I mirror this media set offsite, so I don't want it to get too large. I did a groom several days ago, and ran out of space - not on the volume, but the member was created with a 125GB limit, and I hit that. Since there's plenty of room on the volume, I figured that all I really needed to do was change the limit for the member. It's now showing as 150GB. However, when I go to write to the media set, it always asks for a new member. I really don't wish to have a new member, since I don't want to create another share. I can't see any reason why Retrospect won't add to the current member in the current media set; it's listed has having 25GB free. So far, I've tried repairing the media set (apparently successful), restarting Retrospect, and I can't figure out what else to try. There's no evidence anywhere that there is a problem with the set, or that it's still full, or that it's locked. Any idea how I get Retrospect to write to the same member of the same media set it's been using? Many thanks as always! _KMP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted March 17, 2011 Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 However, when I go to write to the media set, it always asks for a new member. What kind of backup do you run? Normal? Recycle? (I think not). New Media Set? Go to Media Set properties and take a look at "Members". What do you see? ( Post a screen shot if you can.) As the LAST resort, do a "Recycle" backup to wipe out your backup set and back up everything again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2938dc23-e57b-4af5-8718-1b4184949c66 Posted March 17, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 Hey, Lennart, thanks for helping with this! What kind of backup do you run? Normal? Recycle? (I think not). New Media Set? Go to Media Set properties and take a look at "Members". What do you see? ( Post a screen shot if you can.) I attempt a "Normal" backup... which is to say, the "Media action before backup" option is set to "No media action". Here's the Media Set property display: As the LAST resort, do a "Recycle" backup to wipe out your backup set and back up everything again. This is what I'm really trying to avoid. That means shipping another 90GB out to the cloud... which has its costs. Up to now, while I was trying to understand the issues around Retrospect 8, I was reasonably happy to kill a Media Set and try again. I know I can do that, and I am confident that the data in the set is "good". But somehow, I think this set has been marked as "full" even though it isn't. The only other thing I can think of would be to recreate the catalog ("rebuild"), but again that's time-consuming (and I have had less than perfect results doing rebuilds). Thanks for your help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lennart_T Posted March 17, 2011 Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 Hey, Lennart, thanks for helping with this! You're welcome. The media set looks perfectly normal to me. I guess I'm stumped. Sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2938dc23-e57b-4af5-8718-1b4184949c66 Posted March 17, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 Sigh. Now it gets better (or worse, depending on how you want to look at it...) After restarting Retrospect, I realized that the prompt that I have been receiving has changed. The prompt said "Media Needed", and to "Find 1-Online2". This seemed clear about the need to locate this backup. So, I did. Stupidly, I navigated to the volume, then the specific directory /Retrospect/Online2/1-Online2, and clicked "Add" - and, of course, there is now /Retrospect/Online2/1-Online2/Retrospect/Online2/2-Online2. So now I have a new nested directory, and, guess what, Retrospect is now still requesting me to find that 1-Online2 Media Set. I guess it's also strange, or to put it technically, "unexpected output" that Retrospect creates a new member (yes, in the wrong place) and then doesn't even populate it. What is it about this Media Set that makes Retrospect think that it's "full"? I guess I'll try rebuilding the catalog at some point if I can't come up with a better answer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f30e6e60-a263-4d69-8f60-c92703669308 Posted March 17, 2011 Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 The prompt said "Media Needed", and to "Find 1-Online2". now I have a new nested directory This sounds eerily familiar to something I reproduced in July 2010, now marked as bug# 24840: http://forums.dantz.com/showtopic.php?tid/34292/post/140632 I approached my testing by causing the Member to be missing from the Media Set, but your situation where Retrospect thinks it needs a new Member may be triggering the same bug. Sorry I don't know what would work to get this Member to be recognized again, although there are a bunch of different things you could probably try. You can delete the folder in the Finder and delete the Member (only Members with no data can be removed from the Member tab of the Media Set window) to start fresh without the nested folder bug. You weren't clear that you used the pencil icon successfully to modify the Member? (lots of other Forum posts have pointed to the dreaded "an error has occurred" when trying to use this function). Maybe you need to groom the Media Set again, with the correct free space configured. Maybe a catalog rebuild will in fact be necessary. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2938dc23-e57b-4af5-8718-1b4184949c66 Posted March 17, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 This sounds eerily familiar to something I reproduced in July 2010, now marked as bug# 24840: http://forums.dantz.com/showtopic.php?tid/34292/post/140632 I approached my testing by causing the Member to be missing from the Media Set, but your situation where Retrospect thinks it needs a new Member may be triggering the same bug. Sorry I don't know what would work to get this Member to be recognized again, although there are a bunch of different things you could probably try. You can delete the folder in the Finder and delete the Member (only Members with no data can be removed from the Member tab of the Media Set window) to start fresh without the nested folder bug. You weren't clear that you used the pencil icon successfully to modify the Member? (lots of other Forum posts have pointed to the dreaded "an error has occurred" when trying to use this function). Maybe you need to groom the Media Set again, with the correct free space configured. Maybe a catalog rebuild will in fact be necessary. Dave Thanks for that iinformation. Here's what I've done. Repair the Media Set. No change. Rebuild the Media set. Now I have 120 messages in my inbox from Retrospect, each of which includes a varient of: Script: RebuildDate: 3/17/2011 The Disk Media Set data file "AD000420.rdb" reported missing by user " (different data files...) by the way, not all of them are "missing". There's also an rdb_del.log file, which I know is part of the Groom process. What if I kill that? The log has quite a few messages like: > The Disk Media Set data file "ADd.rdb" reported missing by user > The Disk Media Set data files "ADd.rdb" to "ADd.rdb" reported missing by user > The Disk Media Set data files "ADd.rdb" to "ADd.rdb" reported missing by user > The Disk Media Set data file "ADd.rdb" reported missing by user > The Disk Media Set data file "ADd.rdb" reported missing by user > The Disk Media Set data file "ADd.rdb" reported missing by user > The Disk Media Set data file "ADd.rdb" reported missing by user Now my Media Set says that it's got 117 files in it, 2.8GB. Uh, that's clearly incorrect. (I did keep a copy of the old catalog... but...) Does anyone else have any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f30e6e60-a263-4d69-8f60-c92703669308 Posted March 17, 2011 Report Share Posted March 17, 2011 Now my Media Set says that it's got 117 files in it, 2.8GB. Uh, that's clearly incorrect. (I did keep a copy of the old catalog... but...) Upthread your screen capture included the Members tab of the Media Set window; what does that show now? While the Summary tab states a small amount of data, how much data is actually on /Volumes/Backup/ ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2938dc23-e57b-4af5-8718-1b4184949c66 Posted March 18, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2011 Upthread your screen capture included the Members tab of the Media Set window; what does that show now? 1-Online2 - 2.8GB used. While the Summary tab states a small amount of data, how much data is actually on /Volumes/Backup/ ? 126GB. And none of those backup files have been updated since the problem, yesterday morning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2938dc23-e57b-4af5-8718-1b4184949c66 Posted March 18, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2011 Well, the problem is "fixed" now. In fact, rebuilding the Media Set "unlocked" the member. Rather than failing because of timing out the request for new media, Retrospect began appending again to the current member. Of course, the problem is that since the rebuilt catalog contained only ~3% of the expected files, the regularly-scheduled backup is basically starting from zero - except that even though the Media Set contained 125G, Retrospect believes it only contains 3GB, and thus apparently will end up with a 200+GB set. I don't think I have any choice but to recycle the set and start over. I don't think I can risk building on the catalog in its current state. So, what I was trying to avoid - recreating the Media Set, and shipping all of my backups offsite again - has failed. I'll spend another hour in the next few days seeing if I can recreate the problem in such a way that I can report it as a bug. I'm not happy, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Steve Maser Posted March 18, 2011 Report Share Posted March 18, 2011 Something certainly happens when the log file starts referring to the .rdb files as "ADb.rdb" instead of "AD<numbers>.rdb" What does the structure of your media set *folder* look like when you view it in the finder? If you have the "nested directory" problem, I might suggest fixing that so you only have something that looks like: Retrospect Online2 1-Online2 (all the numbered .rdb files) And remove any extra nested directories. And *then* try rebuilding the catalog for "Online2" (this, of course, makes the assumption that "1-Online2" still has 125G of files in it). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2938dc23-e57b-4af5-8718-1b4184949c66 Posted March 18, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2011 If you have the "nested directory" problem, I might suggest fixing that so you only have something that looks like: Retrospect Online2 1-Online2 (all the numbered .rdb files) And remove any extra nested directories. Hi Steve, You're new here, too, eh? :-) I believe that I did this before the rebuild. The Media Set directory is exactly that: /data/Backup/Retrospect/Online2/1-Online2/ which has various .rdb files from AD000002.rdb through AD000587.rdb (missing in sequence are because of grooming); plus the rdb_del.log file. And *then* try rebuilding the catalog for "Online2" (this, of course, makes the assumption that "1-Online2" still has 125G of files in it). 1-Online2 now has 135G of files in it. I've just eliminated all of the files written when it it started updating again yesterday, so we're back at the previous state; I've tried your suggestion again with no luck. I do still have the old catalog file, but I'm rather out of ideas. I believe that I had run a catalog verify, and it was successful (on the old catalog); as far as I could tell everything was accessible. I suppose with all of these attempts I could just replace the old catalog and see if there were any differences. At this point, I'm wondering whether there might be any state kept in the config80 database that is causing this issue, and maybe that's changed... Thanks for the help. Nice to see you here. _KMP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Steve Maser Posted March 18, 2011 Report Share Posted March 18, 2011 Well, if you have the old catalog -- can you restore something from the media set? If so -- and it were me -- I wouldn't necessarily try to "fix" this media set. I'd make a new media set and then see if you can *copy* from the bad media set (using the old catalog file) to copy your data to the new media set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2938dc23-e57b-4af5-8718-1b4184949c66 Posted March 22, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2011 Eventually, I wasn't able to fix this, in spite of trying a number of things. I just spent an hour trying to recreate the problem, so as to be able to report a bug. Here's what I learned: The editing a member ("pencil") doesn't seem to directly change the size of the Media Set in terms of space, it seems to change the percentage used on the physical volume. Perhaps this is well-known, but since I was testing with small Media Sets, this gave me some pause. One can only increase the percent used; if you choose to increase the space in terms of GB by less than 1%, it doesn't "stick". A Disk Media Set on a local machine seems to work as expected. When the media set fills, if the backup script is stopped one can adjust the space usable by the member, and run the job again. The job will complete successfully, writing to that same member. A Disk Media Set on a CIFS/SMB volume (what the Retrospect people would refer to as NAS) does not behave the same way. When the backup is stopped and the size of the usable space is increased (and confirmed by looking at the Media Set page) it does not allow the backup to continue with the same member. This is what happened to me: in the screen shot, Test1 is the media set on the CIFS share after the backup that filled it was stopped when the member filled; then the size was adjusted to 14GB - but running the script again prompts me for the location of the (original) member, but I can't do anything here on the same volume - it just keeps prompting me for the same first member location, even as it creates subdirectories on the share.. I'm not in a position to test this against a "real" NAS or Windows Share, so this might be (another) artifact of using Samba. However, I can reproduce this behavior, so I will file an official request for support with this. It would be useful to know whether this is just a Samba problem, or whether anyone else has seen this. (I did have to recreate the Media Set, unfortunately, I couldn't wait to get backups operating again... but at least I can make the problem happen as required... thanks for all your help!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Steve Maser Posted March 22, 2011 Report Share Posted March 22, 2011 check the old forums for "samba" or "cifs"-- I'm pretty sure this was an issue in how Samba is configured and can be fixed by modifying something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2938dc23-e57b-4af5-8718-1b4184949c66 Posted March 22, 2011 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2011 check the old forums for "samba" or "cifs"-- I'm pretty sure this was an issue in how Samba is configured and can be fixed by modifying something. Ah, yes. That was me... and you, too. The issue was the delete readonly parameter. No, this is something different. Groom works well - in fact, everything seems to work okay, except that if there are any issues with the Media Set filling (or, as I just found out this morning, any other issue that stops a backup in progress), the media set member is somehow locked against further processing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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