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Leopard issue -- "can't open/create startup file"


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Okay... wow, sorry to just abandon the thread like that. My xserve developed an unrelated hardware issue and I had to change out the motherboard and rebuild everything from scratch! So much for quality control.

 

Anyway, after about 2 weeks on the rebuilt system its started doing it again, but this time I'm using different iscsi initiator software (Small Tree) and even a different iscsi target (Windows Storage Server 2k3)

 

Retrospect behaviour is the same - "media" warning in server, cant open/create startup file in the log and on quit, crash when it goes to show the disks.

 

The preference file it was using during the 2-week interlude on the rebuilt system, where it was working perfectly, is the same file it was using before when it wasn't working and is the same file its using again now.

 

I'll see about unmounting the iscsi and if that avoids the crash.

 

Thanks.

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When this "media" happens, are you able to open the Retrospect Catalog properties from Configure>Backup Sets?

 

We have recently found a bug in the Leopard OS that will result in a backup server script reporting "media". Basically Leopard eventually will fail during an Open File command, preventing access to the catalog file that is clearly in the right folder and should be openable.

 

This problem did not happen under Tiger. We spent a huge amount of time debugging this with a different forum user and the problem clearly pointed to a Leopard bug. We are planning to report it to Apple, but we must first write a tool to reproduce the problem outside of Retrospect

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Being that I'm the forum user in question...

 

The only real workaround we've found is to *quit the program* once at least every 48 hours.

 

If we quit/restart the program, then the "media" message seems to not show up for us. If we let it go longer than 48 hours (ie, we forget to do this over a weekend), then we are greeted with "media" in the backup server on Monday morning.

 

We don't have to restart the computer -- just quit and restart the Retrospect program.

 

Or we could downgrade to 10.4.11 again. Haven't quite gone that far yet.

Edited by Guest
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i just had this problem start occurring, about once every 3 days or so for about a week. i've seen it 3 times. my setup is simpler than other posters in this thread.

 

MacBook Pro, 2.4 GHz, OSX 10.5.2, retrospect 6.1.138, driver 6.1.14.101. 4 GB ram.

 

backup server kicks off at 11:30 pm, then stops around 5:30 am, but is set to stay in retrospect so i can review the log in the morning. server finishes its work around 1 am. when i quit the program, which i do every day, this is when the error occurs, if it is going to occur.

 

nothing else is running on the machine. backup is to file sets on rotating firewire drives.

 

i can confirm that the folder /Library/StartupItems/RetroRun is empty when the error occurs on program quit.

 

i have been on Leopard since november. two other backups running similarly, one on tiger on an eMac G4, one on leopard on an iMac G5, have never shown this error.

 

the error only started occurring after two things--

 

- i updated the driver from 6.1.13.101 to 6.1.14.101.

 

- i changed the scan from local desktop to a list of disks (to work around another issue where a scan of an automator disk, which is excluded by selection, failed with an out of memory error).

 

the backups conducted by the other machines backup the local desktop.

 

speculation--the problem occurs when backup serer sits for awhile doing nothing.

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  • 4 months later...

I too am having exactly the same issue that Maser describes and have found that quitting and starting the program appears to fix it. Have used the server for at least two years and recently carbon-copied the drive to a new device so it is running on different hardware. Problem has seemed to occur since then. Am using the latest Server and clients. Was the issue reported to Apple? Is there a work-around? My back-ups occur within 2 hours over night. Is there a way to have the program quit and restart each day automatically?

 

Thanks!

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Issue has been reported to apple (by me and others). If you have not reported the issue, please do so at http://bugreport.apple.com -- they need to hear from more people about this.

 

I asked if there was any news about any fixes in the 10.5.5 seeds that have been reported and was told "nothing new yet". So unless you want to wait for 10.5.6 (or the possible rewrite of retrospect) to address this, I'd suggest you file a bug report on this today to try to get them to look into fixing this in 10.5.5 GM.

 

Or roll back to 10.4.11 -- the problem doesn't occur there.

 

- Steve

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  • 5 months later...

Has there been an update to this problem? I am experiencing the same issue on an Xserve running the latest 10.5.

I'm really not able to downgrade the OS on the box. The only solution is to restart the app every morning.

No iscsi or anything special that I'm aware of.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not that I've heard.

 

I've gotten nothing back from Apple (other then they are still looking at it) when I ask for updates on my bug report.

 

I reported this under 10.5.2 *seeds*. The fact that it's still a bug must mean that it's either a massively-serious issue that would affect an inordinate amount of things. Or they can't reproduce it consistently.

 

And I don't know if the upcoming Retrospect 8 makes any difference or not yet (as the betas have not been stable enough to put all my clients in a "backup server" mode yet...)

Edited by Guest
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Well, add my name to the list. I've also started seeing this*, but only in the last month or so. Can't say for sure, but I'm guessing 10.5.6 "re-broke" something. I don't recall ever seeing this issue on any previous versions of Leopard Server. Now it is occurring every few days. I'll post more info if I can observe anything more specific.

 

Fred

 

* = get the "Media" error even tho the disk is clearly mounted on the desktop and has space available, then go to open the Set and *poof*, Retrospect is gone.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have reported this to Apple, too (Problem ID 6659952 on http://bugreport.apple.com) but have had no response.

 

I spent a lot of time and effort upgrading to Leopard Server 10.5.6 from 10.4.11 only to find that now I must restart Retrospect daily in order to avoid it reporting a "media error", which seems to mean that it can't find the volume mounted from my XServe RAID. Of course the volume is mounted and is accessible the whole time.

 

The same problem occurs when I store the backup set on the internal volume (set up with Apple software RAID).

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

I'm getting this too. Mac OS X 10.5.7. G5 PowerMac. Any one solved it?

 

Tried deleting retrorun" file from /Library/Preferences/Retrospect to no avail.

 

Seems to happen some time after completing a backup (eg a 5 hour period of inactivity).

 

Where is the startup file that it can't 'open/create'?

 

We can't upgrade to the new version until the PowerPC version is released, so would really like to get this fixed.

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  • 4 months later...

Hi!

 

+1. I upgraded our old G4 to Leopard and since then Retrospect has given me hell. I'm trying to upgrade to 8, but there's still a big deal of bureaucracy to go trough. And I don't know if 8 works fine with this or not...

 

Isn't there any fix for this? I'm about to revert the machine to Tiger, but it's hard to believe that Retrospect 6.1 and Leopard simply won't work at all...

 

Yours

 

Miguel Arroz

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+1. I upgraded our old G4 to Leopard and since then Retrospect has given me hell. I'm trying to upgrade to 8, but there's still a big deal of bureaucracy to go trough. And I don't know if 8 works fine with this or not...

 

Isn't there any fix for this? I'm about to revert the machine to Tiger, but it's hard to believe that Retrospect 6.1 and Leopard simply won't work at all...

Miguel,

 

You haven't provided any specifics about your "old G4", so it's hard to tell if that is a supported configuration.

 

The only information I can find about your "old G4" is from an old post by you that indicates your "old G4" is a 450 MHz G4:

 

Our backup machine was upgraded from a really old G4 450 Mhz to a more powerful Powermac G5 Dual 2 Ghz.

Miguel Arroz's older post

 

Comments:

 

(1) Leopard is not supported on a 450 MHz G4. Minimum is an 867 MHz G4.

 

Mac OS 10.5 Technical Specifications

 

(2) Your earlier post indicated a solution when you identified a bad memory module. Could that be happening again?

 

Russ

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Hi!

 

This is a different "old G4". :)

 

It's a dual 1 Ghz G4, with 1 GB RAM. The backup drives are a SCSI Promise RAID attached to an ATTO SCSI card.

 

This hardware worked with Retrospect flawlessly for years now. I upgraded to Leopard to get ready for Retrospect 8, and I'm having the problem described in this thread: a few hours after being running, Retrospect starts failing with the -43 error on every operation, and the error will pop up when quitting. I have deleted all the files in the preferences folder except the config one today, and disabled the aut-launch feature (retrospect runs 24/7). Let's see what happens, but according to the experiences of other people in this thread, I'm not optimistic.

 

I doubt this is an hardware issue, because it worked before, and this is not an internal consistency error or something that indicates a failure due to random data corruption. Besides, it happens exactly like that to other people, as seen here, and looks like Dantz engineers already pointed out this is a Leopard bug. Anyway, I would like to know if there's a workaround or if I should move back to Tiger.

 

Yours

 

Miguel Arroz

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Again, Miguel, you haven't provided any configuration information.

 

Nothing about the version of Retrospect (6.1.?), the version of the Retrospect Driver Update (x.x.x.x), the type of ATTO SCSI card or its firmware version or .kext version (there have been ATTO updates specifically for Mac OS 10.5.x), etc.

 

There are many causes for this specific error, and it's not clear that you are seeing what the other posters in this thread are seeing.

 

Regardless, there aren't going to be any more updates for Retrospect 6.x.

 

Russ

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Hi,

 

Retrospect version is 6.1.230. I'm not sure what the Driver version is (I only have command line access to the backup machine right now) but I'm sure it's the latest one up to today, as I already have followed the "make sure you are using the latest versions of everything" steps.

 

The SCSI card is an ATTO UL3S. I found out that the ATTO drivers would cause serious problems on Leopard (the drive access would stop after reading about 2 or 3 MB of data from them), so I uninstalled the ATTO drivers and I'm using OS X built-in ones, and drive access seems to be working without problems.

 

OS X is up to date (10.5.8) with all the software updates installed.

 

Also, I can access the backup sets via the Retrospect main window (browsing trough the various snapshots, etc), and, as many users reported, if I configure a backup to be done in an existing backup set to about 10 minutes later, it will be done with no issues. But if some hours go by, the scheduled backups (during the night) won't be done, all the backup scripts will report the -43 error, even those ones that have as destinations the backup sets I test in the afternoon.

 

Is that enough info? :)

 

Yours

 

Miguel Arroz

Edited by Guest
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Yep. I was mainly curious about the ATTO card because I knew of the UL3S driver issues. This still could be a .kext / firmware issue with the ATTO card and Leopard. Because you don't seem to be using tape, this is probably not an ATTO issue.

 

Retrospect version is 6.1.230. I'm not sure what the Driver version is (I only have command line access to the backup machine right now) but I'm sure it's the latest one up to today, as I already have followed the "make sure you are using the latest versions of everything" steps.

Ok. If you only have CLI access, you can still determine the version if you have the Developer tools installed by using the DeRez command:

 

$ /Developer/Tools/DeRez "/Applications/Retrospect 6.1/Retrospect 6.1 Driver Update" | tail

 

The problem is that the RDU is a plug in, and everything is in the resources. The technology is old.

 

Russ

Edited by Guest
DeRez to get version from CLI
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