Incremental backup selecting files already backed up

[leydon 0]

Retrospect Server for Mac v 6.1.126 with driver update 6.1.8.101, OS X 10.3.9

Client is Win XP Pro with all MS patches, and Retrospect Client 7.0.107

 

I've backed up this laptop to this Mac many times in the past, both to a disk based and tape based backup set. Now when I try to run the same backup script it is selecting all the files like the system has never been backed up before. I was having a similar problem about a year ago and updating to 6.1.126 fixed it.

 

Does anyone have any idea why it would do this? Nothing crashed or failed. I successfully ran the same script about a month ago where it selected on the order of 250MB to backup. Now it want's to backup 49 GB which is basically the entire contents of the drive.

 

I have two different scripts, two different backup sets, one goes to a file backup set, the other goes to a tape backup set. Both of them when I try running the script, or set it up manually to use the same selectors and backup sets say that 49 GB needs to be backed up.

 

I sometimes connect both the mac and the laptop behind a linksys router so they both have 192.168.0.x ip's. I've tried running the backup under both conditions, behind the router and just on the lan (i.e. sometimes the client has a different ip...would this make Retrospect think it's an entirely new system or that files previously backed up are not now?) , in both cases the selector is acting like it can't see what has already been backed up.

[rhwalker 2]

Quote:

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Does anyone have any idea why it would do this? Nothing crashed or failed. I successfully ran the same script about a month ago where it selected on the order of 250MB to backup. Now it want's to backup 49 GB which is basically the entire contents of the drive.

 

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There was an intervening Daylight Savings Time change. It doesn't affect our Macintosh clients, but I don't know whether it affects Windows clients. It would be interesting to see if you did the backup and then tried the backup again to see whether it realized that it only needed to back up a few things now. Retrospect uses the volume creation date/time as part of its decision whether it's got the same volume for backup.

 

Seems curious that the same thing happened "about a year ago." Perhaps related to the time change then?

 

Just a thought.

 

Russ

[twickland 69]

Wndows and Mac OS use different methods to account for Daylight Savings time. Cross-platform backups after the time change will always result in a full backup.

 

It would be nice if there was a way to write a selector to exclude files whose modification time differed by exactly one hour from the version already backed up, but there isn't.

 

We use the time changes as the points to introduce our new media backups.

[Mocker 0]

I am not sure on the Mac side but on the windows side it changes the Modification date and time on the files when changing time zones - not sure if it would be the same thing as daylight savings...

 

Anyways, try small and simple test:

 

Setup a folder on your Client (or use an existing one) define it as a subvolume and back it up.

Then, go to the Immediate section again, Backup - make sure the folder that you just backed up is still the Source and the Destination is also the same - then hit Preview.

Retrospect at that point should scan that folder to match the files to the backup set.

 

If the files are highlighted in blue, that means that Retrospect will want to backup the files again.

If the files have diamonds next to them, that means that Retrospect does not need to backup the file again because it already exists in the backup set.

 

If you still notice that Retrospect is trying to backup the files again, take a look at the attributes of the file. Retrospect will match files by Modified date/time, file size, Creation date/time, etc. Compare the file attributes in the backup set with the actual files on the Windows Client.

 

Maybe Retrospect isn't seeing the File information properly? Also, check the Operations Log in Retrospect to see if this started happening at a specific date and maybe give you more info to go by.

 

Good Luck!