Forced hard boot has lost Retrospect 8.2 configuration

[2927aa2c-bcad-4982-b785-6b9ccc007482]

Hi,

 

Our Retrospect server (the Mac machine) froze this week and I was forced to do a hard boot. At the time, Retrospect had been doing a groom on a media set for @20 hours (I think it had stalled because there was about 10 KB space left before the groom started and media sets with practically no space remaining never groom properly for me). On reboot, Retrospect asked for a license key which has never happened before. I entered the key but now the old configuration and settings are all gone - no media sets, no scripts, etc.

 

From previous forum posts, it looks like I should restore the config80.dat file. Did this get corrupted? The version in /Library/Application Support/Retrospect is now 470KB. The catalogs directory still seems to have all the old catalog files. The old config80.dat file was hopefully included in the backup set for the Mac server but I do not know how to restore it. Any help is appreciated.

[Lennart_T]

Our Retrospect server (the Mac machine) froze this week and I was forced to do a hard boot. At the time, Retrospect had been doing a groom on a media set for @20 hours (I think it had stalled because there was about 10 KB space left before the groom started and media sets with practically no space remaining never groom properly for me)

 

We schedule groom scripts every weekend. One reason is to avoid problems like that. The other reason is to avoid a lengthy groom in the middle of an important backup.

 

Where are the catalog files? They should NOT be on the same volume. When grooming, Retrospect need space to update the catalog file. Space it doesn't have if it is on the same volume.

 

At the very least, set Retrospect to use at most 99% of a volume. For a 1TB volume, that's about 10GB free, which should help a bit.

 

 

 

From previous forum posts, it looks like I should restore the config80.dat file. Did this get corrupted?

 

That is a common problem with Retrospect

[2927aa2c-bcad-4982-b785-6b9ccc007482]

Thanks for the grooming tip. I will take this approach in the future.

 

The catalog files are stored on the Retrospect server machine which has lots of free space (>300 GB), not on the clients or the file servers where the media sets live. None of the file servers where the media sets are too close to capacity.

 

Retrospect technical support told me to restore the config80.dat file from the .bak file but that is also about 470KB and probably blank. I'm guessing that happened because I rebooted the server a couple of times so the .bak file was probably replaced on reboot. I think the old config80.dat file is backed up in the Retrospect server machine's media set but I have no idea how to restore it without the configuration file (chicken and egg). We had Time Machine backups of the Retrospect folder but they seem to have stopped running last March.

[twickland]

I have no idea how to restore it without the configuration file (chicken and egg).

Retrospect always has a config file, if only the default one. If this is all you have, go to Media Sets, click on Locate and navigate to your desired catalog. After adding it to the list, perform a Restore by searching for the file "Config80.dat." Restore a version that is likely to be from before the time you started having problems. This file will be restored to a new folder.

 

After the restore completes, quit the Retrospect console and stop the Retrospect engine. Drag the files Config80.dat and Config80.bak from /Library/Application Support/Retrospect to the trash, and then drag the Config80.dat file you just restored into the /Library/Application Support/Retrospect folder. Restart the engine and launch the console. Retrospect will begin trying to execute any scripted events that were scheduled to run between the time this restored config file was last updated and now. Stop and remove whichever items from Activities> Running and Activities> Waiting that you no longer want Retrospect to execute.

[2927aa2c-bcad-4982-b785-6b9ccc007482]

Thanks, Tim. That's exactly the information I was looking for. I'll try that when I get back to work next week.

[2927aa2c-bcad-4982-b785-6b9ccc007482]

Hi,

 

I'm running into some trouble here. The situation is as follows:

• The media set (38GB, 250,000 files) for the Retrospect server backup has two members, each on one of our file servers, say Mario and Luigi.
  
• The catalog file for this media set is stored on the Retrospect server itself (/Library/Application Support/Retrospect/Catalogs).
  
• I am trying to restore the Config80.dat file in the media set by using the catalog.
  

The first step I did was to add the file servers Mario and Luigi by going into Source->Add->Add Share. If I look at the Servers tab in Sources, I see Mario and Luigi and the correct Used/Total amounts. HOWEVER, if I double-click on the Mario source in the main panel, it is listed as Mario-1 (actually, now it is Mario-2 as I rebooted to try to fix this problem). This may be part of my problem below.

 

My next step was to go to Media Sets->Locate->and browse to a *copy* of the catalog file on the Retrospect server. I made a copy of this catalog file just in case something I did corrupted the original and have been trying the restoration using this copy. This seems to work as my media set now shows up with both members and a list of backups.

 

However, a restoration does not work for me. I click Restore->Restore selected files and folders->Select the backup->Browse and then the dialog spins accessing the media set. I know this can take a while but this is a small media set and I ran this for 24 hours with no progress. Next, I tried clicking on the media set and hitting Verify. This immediately yielded the error 'Needs media' which suggests to me that the sources are not set up correctly. I could probably navigate to the member manually but I am unsure whether this would corrupt the media set.

 

UPDATE: I got a little further on now. I rebooted, noticed that the file server was already mounted in /Volumes and so did not add it via the Sources as I had been doing. Bam, the browsing worked almost instantly and I was able to choose the Config80.bak and .dat files. However, now when I start the restoration, it spins for a while and then again yields the error 'Needs media'.

 

 

Does anyone have any thoughts on what is going wrong? Thanks again for getting me this far.

 

--

Retrospect server: Retrospect 8.2.0 (399) running on a Mac mini running Mac OS X Server v10.6.8.

[twickland]

The first step I did was to add the file servers Mario and Luigi by going into Source->Add->Add Share. If I look at the Servers tab in Sources, I see Mario and Luigi and the correct Used/Total amounts. HOWEVER, if I double-click on the Mario source in the main panel, it is listed as Mario-1 (actually, now it is Mario-2 as I rebooted to try to fix this problem).

What do you mean by "main panel?" And were Mario and Luigi preceded by a circle icon (clear or green) or by a lightning bolt in the listing you mention? If the latter, this would indicate that the volumes were unavailable to Retrospect at that time under those names.

 

Seeing the share name with the -1 appended means that the share has been mounted more than once. In Unix and Mac OS X, each additional simultaneous mounting of a share will result in the new mounting having a share name with an appended number increased by one. When accessing the share in Retrospect, you should make sure that the source has not been mounted in Finder or by any other application, so that Retrospect will always be able to mount the source under the name it expects.

 

However, now when I start the restoration, it spins for a while and then again yields the error 'Needs media'.

You say "error." Do you actually mean some kind of error window appeared? Or do you mean that the Activities pane is requesting media and is showing the flashing "Needs Media" icon? Did you ever click on the "Choose media..." button to find out which media member Retrospect was looking for?

[2927aa2c-bcad-4982-b785-6b9ccc007482]

What do you mean by "main panel?" And were Mario and Luigi preceded by a circle icon (clear or green) or by a lightning bolt in the listing you mention? If the latter, this would indicate that the volumes were unavailable to Retrospect at that time under those names.

By "main panel", I mean the panel in Sources under the All, Servers, Desktops & Laptops... bar. The panel which shows the list view of the sources. The circle icon for those sources is clear with no lightning bolt.

 

Seeing the share name with the -1 appended means that the share has been mounted more than once. In Unix and Mac OS X, each additional simultaneous mounting of a share will result in the new mounting having a share name with an appended number increased by one. When accessing the share in Retrospect, you should make sure that the source has not been mounted in Finder or by any other application, so that Retrospect will always be able to mount the source under the name it expects.

It seems that Disk Utility has that share mounted as an NFS mount. This would have been done a long time ago, during which time backups were working, and has not changed recently. Maybe when Retrospect lost its configuration, Disk Utility 'got' the first mount position? I have no idea. I'm pretty sure I know the reason for the Disk Utility mount though so I disabled it and rebooted twice (the first time I forgot to save the dismount). On both reboots, Retrospect *again* asked me for the license code - it had lost the recent configurations completely. I really hope this does not continue to happen.

 

 

You say "error." Do you actually mean some kind of error window appeared? Or do you mean that the Activities pane is requesting media and is showing the flashing "Needs Media" icon? Did you ever click on the "Choose media..." button to find out which media member Retrospect was looking for?

 

Sorry, I meant that the Activities pane is requesting media. I had not chosen the media member to avoid the possibility of corrupting anything and since it appeared that this was not the root cause of my problem.

 

---

 

I'll start again giving all the information which might help someone figure out where I was going wrong.

 

I have removed the Disk Utility NFS mount. There is now only one Mario mount in /Volumes, /Volumes/mariobackup, created by adding the source in Retrospect. Likewise for Luigi. The contents of /Volumes/mariobackup/Retrospect/MyBackupServer/1-MyBackupServer/ are the rdb files. Likewise for Luigi.

 

I have one media set, MyBackupServer, which I recreated by clicking Locate in Media Sets and selecting the original catalog file /Library/Application Support/Retrospect/Catalogs/MyBackupServer.rbc which resides on the Retrospect server (MyBackupServer). The MyBackupServer media set has two members, 1-MyBackupServer in location /Volumes/mariobackup (in /Volumes/mariobackup/Retrospect/MyBackupServer/1-MyBackupServer) and 2-MyBackupServer in location /Volumes/luigibackup. I tried the restore again and the Activities pane again shows the flashing "Needs Media" icon. I chose the "Choose media..." button and selected mariobackup (a root node) in the dialog. This displays the error 'This disk is already a member of this media set' in the dialog.

 

Okay this is kind of where I was already. However, I went back to the Media Set, edited the members and reselected their original locations (select the member, click the pencil/edit icon, and select the root node e.g. mariobackup for the corresponding member). I tried the restore, restoring to /test/restoretest and... it worked. Kind of. Retrospect did not store the files in /test/restoretest so I checked and it overwrote the configuration files in e /Library/Application Support/Retrospect/. I find this behavior extremely unintuitive and dangerous.

 

However, I stopped the Retrospect server, restarted it, and my configuration appears to be restored at first glance. However, the engine crashed during its first backup. Could this be because I restored both the config80.dat and config80.bak files? On restart, Retrospect started running scripts again but one of them was the script it froze on (see first post). It looks like it may be freezing again, or at least being extremely unresponsive.