Peculiarities with Retrospect Engine 12.0.2

[twickland]

We recently encountered several problems with Retrospect Engine 12.0.2. At one point, the engine couldn't communicate properly with our tape drive, a problem that was only resolved when we reinstalled the engine; this was described here. Last weekend, the engine got stuck in the middle of initiating a backup to one media set. "Stuck" means that the little activity wheel icon was spinning but no progress was being made. 

 

While in this stuck state, the engine was successfully able to run another backup using a different script and destination media set, but was then unable to carry out any other copy or backup scripts, all of which ended up on the list of waiting activities. What was peculiar about this waiting list was that the reason that was listed for having to wait differed among the various activities, with the reason for some of the waits seemingly being unrelated to the stuck activity. For example, one backup activity said it was waiting for a particular client that was not the client that the stuck backup was connecting to.

 

When I went to Activity Monitor, I noted that I was unable to sample the Retrospect Engine process, even after waiting 20+ minutes for the sample to be taken. I was unable to stop the engine in the Retrospect preference pane, and so I force-quit the process. The engine process did quit, but then immediately respawned, something I had never observed before. This respawned engine process was essentially idle, and I was able to stop and start it from the preference pane. However, even though it was idle, I was still unable to sample the process.

 

All of the above issues, with the possible exception of not being able to sample the engine process, appeared after the OS was updated to 10.10.4.

 

I would appreciate any observations or thoughts people might have on any of the above behaviors. Thanks.