Retrospect hangs

[swalker]

Retrospect 6.1.126/Mac OS X 10.4.9 Server on Intel Mac Pro (booting from mirrored internal SATA drives) backing up to DLT7000 via ATTO UL5D SCSI.

 

Often Windows clients hang on the Backup server, stopping all backup. I click stop to stop the backup, and the message "cancelling execution..." shows in the progress window, but that's as far as it goes. I have to force quit Retrospect and sometimes have to reboot the server machine in addition to get backups working again. This is not a new problem, just getting around to griping about it.

 

I have used Retrospect for many years, and it seems that errors like this have been a bane of the product. Its like its waiting forever for some message from SCSI that it never gets. How about a timeout? Things do go wrong, and if a programmer can't anticipate them adequately, how about some more elegant means of dealing with it? That's certainly how I write my code.

[twickland]

Does the problem occur only with certain clients? If so, have you tried forgetting those clients and logging them back in again?

 

Is there anything different about the troublesome clients? For example, is link encryption enabled?

 

Was there ever a time when you did not experience the hang with these clients?

 

What version of the Windows client software are you using? There were issues with at least some versions of the Windows 6.5 client that could cause a hang when the backup switched to a new tape member. I also understand that EMC does not recommend the 7.5 client with Mac backup servers. In our case, we've had no problems with the Windows 6.0.110 or 7.0.112 client versions.

 

You might also check out the thread Retrospect hangs when backing up a windows client.

[swalker]

Hangs have not recurred since I installed an ATTO SCSI firmware update & re-applied 10.4.9 update using a combo updater.