Retrospect frequently crashing with assertion failure at "elem.cpp-1145"

[infinitesunrise]

Some background: I've got about a hundred HFS+ formatted external hard drives full of data that I'm transferring to LTO6 one at a time by attaching them to our OS X Yosemite server and sharing them all out under the same SMB share name ('Archive'). On the Retrospect side in Windows (Desktop v 10.0.2.119), I have an incremental backup script that pulls everything from the 'Archive' share. So I plug in a drive on OS X, share it out via SMB as 'Archive', back it up over the LAN with the script in Retrospect, unshare it, unplug it, and repeat with a new drive so that everything backed up all shows up under 'Archive' in the catalog.

 

But I've been running into this error that crashes Retrospect completely, over and over again. The first drive I backed up was an 8TB and the backup got through about 7.5TB just fine. But on the last 300GB or so it kept seemingly running into files that would trip it up. It would throw up the error message 'Retrospect has encountered a serious error: Assertion failure at "elem.cpp-1145"; A log of this error has been written to the file "assert_log.utx".' I noticed that it always seemed to trip up on a large sequence of images that was on the drive, a different image file every time. I eventually zipped the entire folder of images on the drive, Retrospect had no problem chugging through the zip file, and the backup finished.

 

I'm now on the second drive and it's happening again, but this time it looks like Retrospect's window disappears completely behind the error message, so I can't tell what file it hangs up on. Doesn't look like I have any choice but to just run the backup again, which means Retrospect has to spend hours figuring out which of the 2TB of files it's already backed up (I guess because the catalog file doesn't save correctly when it crashes?), and then it crashes the same way once it's a decent way through the new attempt at the backup.

 

Obviously I cannot continue this way. I have literally hundreds of drives to work through and I was already expecting this to take a year or so. I absolutley have to find out why Retrospect is crashing, or I'm not going to be able to move all these archives off their hard drives. I don't know where the "assert_log.utx" that the error message mentions is located, otherwise I'd take a look at that for clues. I see that in the release notes of v 9.0.1.011 last year a mention that it fixes the "elem.cpp-1145" assertion failure I'm getting, but here I am running the latest version still getting it. Does anyone know what this means? Can anyone suggest any way to fix it?

 

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[jotrago]

You don't fully specify your setup but I'm guessing from the version number that Retrospect is on Windows. Mounting mac drives, sharing over SMB to windows sounds risky and slow to me.

GIven the huge task facing you I would seriously consider installing Retrospect on a Mac, and pulling the data directly from USB to Tape.

I know that sometimes attaching tape drives to Macs can be a challenge (Interface cards etc)

In that case at least install a Mac Client on the system with the drives, and backup to your WIndows system with the tape drive. At least that way the data is being extracted on a mac, and then transported across the lan in "Retrospect" format. Should be more reliable.

Even if that involves a little expense for some licenses.

 

Failing that the Assert-Log.utx on Windows 7 or later is in c:/Program Data/Retrospect (Program Data is a Hidden Folder)

Drag and Drop it on to Retro and it will open in Retro's UTX viewer or it will be reasonably readable in Notepad or other text viewer

You may have to compare it with the Retro Ops Log (which you will find in the same folder) and Windows Event Logs to see if you can find some correlation at the time the crashes happen.

[infinitesunrise]

Sorry for the ambiguity. Yes, Retrospect is on Windows. We're a nearly all-Mac studio and I'm a Mac native but I always opt for Windows when using Retrospect because I'm not at all a fan of the Mac version. I've had lots of issues with it in the past, due to both the hardware difficulties you mentioned and bugginess in the Mac version of Retrospect when dealing with larger catalogs. The Windows version seems to run much faster and the interface is more straightforward to me, so I prefer to build a dedicated Windows machine for Retrospect LTO backups regardless of environment.

 

Regarding trying to make the Mac a backup client instead of going over SMB, at this point I would like to try that. When we purchased Retrospect our license was for "Retrospect Desktop with 5 Workstation Clients", and sure enough when I click Licenses within Retrospect I see a 5-pack listed under Backup Clients, with '0 used, 5 available' under Status. I installed the Retrospect client on the Mac and it's running, and I can see the Mac when I go to add a new Retrospect client in Windows. But when I click 'add', Retrospect says 'Additional license required' and asks for one. But, I was only even given a single license so I don't know what's going on with that. If that's in error and can be resolved then I'd gladly go that route, but otherwise I don't think we'd have the budget for further licenses.

 

Found the logs but they didn't elucidate much, the asserts log looks like a stack trace and doesn't say much, no clues in the ops log and nothing within that time frame in Windows event logs

[Scillonian]

I installed the Retrospect client on the Mac and it's running, and I can see the Mac when I go to add a new Retrospect client in Windows. But when I click 'add', Retrospect says 'Additional license required' and asks for one. But, I was only even given a single license so I don't know what's going on with that. If that's in error and can be resolved then I'd gladly go that route, but otherwise I don't think we'd have the budget for further licenses.

Is the Mac running the server version of OS X?

 

The Desktop version of Retrospect only supports using non server versions of Windows and OS X as clents. If the Mac is running the server version of OS X the license being asked for is for a version of Retrospect the supports servers as clients.

[Scillonian]

Paragon Software Group makes the HFS+ for Windows® file system driver. In theory this should allow the Mac disks to be connected to the Retrospect machine and their contents transferred locally to tape instead of over the network.

[infinitesunrise]

It is indeed the server version of OS X, drat. The licensing options were a bit confusing, but looking over them all it makes sense to me now and it's clear that I have a more limited version of Retrospect. The HFS+ driver sounds like a good bet, I'll give that a shot. Thanks for the help from both of you!