Sources mess up selected drives for backups

[jelockwood 1]

After you add a new source that is a Mac running the Retrospect client you can configure whether the source is used to backup all drives on the source, or selected drives, or just the boot drive.

 

Unfortunately this has a tendency to go wrong - frequently. As a result it then typically backs up drives you do not want backing up with the then result that the backup medium gets full up and therefore often needs to be recycled and therefore unavoidably losing all your previous incremental backups. This then can mean the next backup takes a correspondingly longer amount of time and in the worst case can take several days or cycles to catch up.

 

Examples of events that can cause this are -

 

• Renaming a drive on the source
• Plugging an additional drive in to the source
• Initially having a source configured to all drives which at that time might have been desired but later changing it to selected drives and Retrospect not obeying this change even though the Server console shows it is correctly configured
• Retrospect for some unknown reason showing two or more duplicate drives when these do not exist

 

In theory I believe using the 'Refresh' option in Retrospect in Sources should tell Retrospect Server to update a source and the list of drives on the source and one would expect this to i) remove no longer present drives, ii) to add new drives, and iii) to rename drives listed as appropriate. Sadly in all or the overwhelming number of times I have tried this Refresh command it has failed to update the drive list.

 

Since the Refresh command does not help, the only workaround I have found involves removing the source, re-adding the source, then re-adding the source back to the script.

 

As mentioned the most annoying issue is it causing backup media to become full and needing to be recycled.

 

This is happening with Retrospect Server and Client 13.5.

[DavidHertzberg 74]

If you think this is a bug that should be fixed by Retrospect Inc., you will have to submit it as a Support Case.  For English speakers, that is done by going here, and filling out the form (sorry, I don't know what the equivalent addresses are for non-English speakers, but they can figure it out from their appropriate Retrospect website address).  IMHO this is quite reasonable; obliging you to fill out the form provides Retrospect Inc. with useful details about your Retrospect installation that they would otherwise have to query you for.

 

As a result, Retrospect Inc. will pay no attention to your post in this sub-forum.  On 12 December 2016, in response to a letter I snail-mailed to Mayoff,  I received an e-mail through a Mayoff account that was signed by JG Heithcock, CEO, Retrospect, Inc..  In it he says "From reading your letter, I think the main issue is that you view the forums as a good place to talk to us, Retrospect, Inc. But we view the audience of the forums as restricted to our customers [my emphasis]. The one caveat we have made on that is for feature requests, largely as we would like to see if other customers also agree on the desirability and feature set for these requests."

 

That means that the only audience for "Retrospect bug reports" in this sub-forum will be other administrators of Retrospect Mac.  Nevertheless, by posting in this sub-forum you are providing a useful service to us fellow Mac administrator peasants—one that is denied to administrators of Retrospect Windows who are evidently considered too peasanty 🤨  to benefit from such bug notifications.  Thank you.

 

Please be aware that the "description of your issue" in the Support Case form is IME limited to about 2000 characters by the Support Case software.  If you go over that limit your "description" will be broken up into a "description" plus one or more "additional notes".  The same is true for any "additional notes" you may later post yourself.  I suggest that, to avoid the appearance of choppiness in your Support Case, you create your case in a post in this forum and then copy it paragraph-by-paragraph to your Support Case. 

 

If this post sounds formulaic, that's because I intend it to be.  I intend to post it in every new thread that appears in this sub-forum, unless the OP indicates that he/she has or will open a Support Case for the bug that the thread reports.  Of course, Mayoff could take 5 minutes of his time to post a slightly-more-polite version of this post as a  "sticky thread" that will always appear at the top of the forum.  I don't intend to hold my breath until that happens (insert appropriate smiley here).