repetitive SIGSEGV error

[minidomo]

I've got a Mac mini (Late 2014) running macOS 10.14.5 and Retrospect Single Server 15.6.1.105. While looking through the Console log, I find that most of it is filled with this repeating error:

Jun  1 01:11:09 PJJ4 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.retrospect.retroisa): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Jun  1 01:11:19 PJJ4 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.retrospect.retroisa[13266]): Service exited due to SIGSEGV | sent by exc handler[13266]
Jun  1 01:11:19 PJJ4 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.retrospect.retroisa): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Jun  1 01:11:29 PJJ4 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.retrospect.retroisa[13267]): Service exited due to SIGSEGV | sent by exc handler[13267]
Jun  1 01:11:29 PJJ4 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.retrospect.retroisa): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
Jun  1 01:11:39 PJJ4 com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.retrospect.retroisa[13268]): Service exited due to SIGSEGV | sent by exc handler[13268]

Retrospect seems to be working but the Console log is so filled with this error that it basically obscures any other useful information. Any idea on how I can fix it?

[DavidHertzberg]

minidomo,

I don't know know what the cause of this specific error is, but I'm pretty sure that "retroisa" is Retrospect's separate Instant Scan process.  If you un-check the Enable Instant Scan box per page 200 in the Retrospect Mac 15 User's Guide, that should eliminate the repetitive Console error message.  The cost will be some slowness in your backups. 

BTW, is this message in the Retrospect Console log, or in the macOS Console log?

Another thought that occurs to me is that your Mac Mini may have a drive formatted with APFS, especially if it's running macOS 10.14 and the drive is an SSD.  Several administrators found that Retrospect Mac 15 was taking hours to scan APFS-formatted source drives, and a Knowledge Base article was updated in May 2018—when Retrospect 15 was the latest major version—to state that Retrospect Instant Scan doesn't work for APFS.  As stated in this final post in that same thread,  after my MacBook Pro "client" SSD was forcibly converted to APFS I upgraded to Retrospect Mac 16; I found that the MBP scan is taking less time without Instant Scan than it did under Retrospect Mac 15—when the SSD was still formatted with HFS+ and I was using Instant Scan.  (I should point out that Retrospect Inc. and its predecessor corporations have never paid me a cent, so I won't get a commission if you upgrade to Retrospect Mac 16—and you may be able to get away with upgrading to the Desktop Edition because I don't think Retrospect can identify recent editions of macOS Server .)

Edited June 2, 2019 by DavidHertzberg
Added three sentences to final paragraph; KB article was updated in May 2018 when Retrospect 15 was latest major version

[minidomo]

I figured it had something do with Instant Scan although I wasn't sure what. I had gone into the Retrospect control panel and confirmed that Instant Scan was disabled on this computer itself (screenshot attached). Thanks to your reply, I looked up that page reference and disabled Instant Scan on our five clients as well but I'm still seeing this message show up in the macOS Console log (apologies for the confusion).

Funny thing is that I hadn't looked at Retrospect's log at all (stupid, stupid, stupid). I'm not exactly seeing a corresponding error there but I am seeing another error that pops up randomly for no apparently reason, often in little clusters -- might be related?

  [*] UGetDriveType: ioQuery.Open /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/PJJ4/2019-06-01-004304/Kitchen failed; devicePath com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-06-01-004304@/dev/disk1s1, file system apfs, osErr -35
  [*] UGetDriveType: ioQuery.Open /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/PJJ4/2019-06-01-014136/Kitchen failed; devicePath com.apple.TimeMachine.2019-06-01-014136@/dev/disk1s1, file system apfs, osErr -35

The funny thing about it is that there's no reason Retrospect should even be looking at this location. This Mac mini acts as the office's server (although it's not actually running macOS Server - we just use plain file sharing since it's a very small office). I've considered switching over to macOS Server to deal with some unrelated issues but haven't run macOS Server before so I'd have to learn more about it before doing that. Anyway, this is getting away from the issue at hand. This Mac "server" has three permanent volumes:

• Kitchen - the boot drive (the Retrospect apps runs on this volume too)
• Stove - a USB external drive where data is stored
• Fridge - a USB external Time Machine drive

There are a trio of rotating USB external drives that are used as backup volume targets but those change every week.As you can see in the error message, it's pointing to the Time Machine snapshot folder. If I do ls -lah at a Terminal prompt, I can see this hidden volume exists:

drwxr-xr-x@  7 root      wheel   224B Jun  2 13:41 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 30 root      wheel   960B May 19 00:12 ..
drwxrwxr-x@ 29 pjjstaff  staff   1.0K Jun  2 14:14 BackupB
drwxrwxr-x   5 root      wheel   442B Jun  2 13:41 Fridge
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root      wheel     1B Jun  1 01:25 Kitchen -> /
drwxrwxr-x@ 10 pjjstaff  staff   408B Jun  3  2018 Stove
drwxr-xr-x+  3 root      wheel    96B Feb 27  2018 com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots

Not sure why Retrospect is even trying to scan this volume. There are only two folders on Kitchen that I have Retrospect backup at all, and these are in the current user's home folder. Retrospect doesn't target anything on Fridge (the Time Machine drive) at all.

I had considered upgrading to Retrospect 16 but, after reviewing the feature list, nothing earth-shattering jumped out at me. Retrospect 15 supports macOS 10.14 so this should be a compatible combination. Still, if there's a compatibility problem that I can solve by upgrading to Retrospect 16, I'll do it -- I'm just not seeing evidence of that yet.
 

 

 

 

[DavidHertzberg]

minidomo,

Am I correct in thinking that the messages you refer to in your third paragraph immediately above are in the macOS Console log, not the Retrospect log?  [assumes Indian accent] You should PM me your credit card information, so that our technical specialist can remove a very serious virus infection from your Mac! [ drops Indian accent]   Seriously, maybe you should stop looking at your macOS Console log.  I assume you've checked your Retrospect scripts to make sure that "Fridge" and/or its folders are not check-marked as Sources or used as Destinations in any of them.

My guess is that you're getting those messages either because you're still running Time Machine, or at because at one time you specified a Time Machine Backup Disk.  If it's the latter, you should go to System Preferences->Time Machine, click Select Backup Disk, click the "Fridge" disk that's shown there, and then click the Remove button to remove it.  If it's the former, then you should know that Time Machine doesn't work with an APFS-formatted Backup Disk (which is what the messages are telling you)—so reformat "Fridge" with HFS+ (which you may not be able to do if it's an SSD).

If you're not running macOS Server or Windows Server on any of your machines, then Desktop Edition is all you need.  As I've delicately alluded to in this post and the following one in another thread,  Retrospect Inc. is worried about reduced Edition license revenue because many installations have substituted Linux-based file servers for macOS Server—which doesn't provide much anymore beyond what you get for free with macOS 10.14.  An upgrade to Retrospect Mac 16 Desktop Edition will cost you US$70-75.

[Nigel Smith]

On 6/2/2019 at 7:32 PM, minidomo said:

Thanks to your reply, I looked up that page reference and disabled Instant Scan on our five clients as well but I'm still seeing this message show up in the macOS Console log (apologies for the confusion).

launchd still thinks it should load InstantScan, even if you've turned it off. Try the following in Terminal to stop launchd from trying to load retroisa now, and turn if off for the future:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.retrospect.retroisa.plist
sudo defaults write /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.retrospect.retroisa Disabled -bool true

Then check to see if it's worked:

sudo launchctl list | grep -i retro

...and, with any luck, you'll see just retroclient and updater listed and not retroisa.

 

On 6/2/2019 at 7:32 PM, minidomo said:

There are only two folders on Kitchen that I have Retrospect backup at all, and these are in the current user's home folder.

How are you choosing those folders -- are they "Favo(u)rites", or are you using rules?

[DavidHertzberg]

Thank you, Nigel Smith, for suggesting a problem explanation—launchd—I didn't know anything about.  minidomo, did you inherit and/or upgrade this Retrospect installation?

minidomo, read all pages 198-204 in the Retrospect Mac 15 User's Guide.  "launchctl on the Mac" on pages 203-204 discusses what Nigel has diagnosed, with a slightly different (but possibly out-of-date, because the chapters after "What's New" in the UG haven't been updated in years) solution.

[minidomo]

Thanks, Nigel! I used the sudo commands you listed and the SIGSEGV error immediately stopped showing up in the Mac's console log. Now that I have a meaningful system log again, I can go back to researching my non-Retrospect related issue.  

[Nigel Smith]

Glad it's sorted -- the rogue attempted startup, anyways.

That "...localsnapshots"  volume is cruft left over from previous OS's Time Machine -- 10.14 doesn't use it any more. As to why it's being scanned -- you say you're only backing up a couple of directories from the User folder on the system drive. If they are defined as Favourites then nothing else should be scanned (assuming you've tagged them appropriately for your script etc). If you are doing it via Rules, eg. "back up files on this computer if their path matches /Users/..." then Retrospect has to scan every file and folder on the machine looking for matches. That will include other mounted volumes if your tags etc are set that way.

Needless to say, for fast scan times when you are only backing up a subset of a computer's data, Favourites are your friend.

Bonus tip 😉 Step away from the Console log! There's ridiculous amounts of guff in there these days, often with multiple updates a second. Step over to the Eclectic Light Company for a primer on using "log show" and how to isolate log items by time period, use predicates to filter by event or program, etc. I haven't tried their Consolation log viewer myself, but you might find it more friendly than using Terminal.