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Retrospect 8.2 on OSX 10.6.4 on a Macbook pro.

 

was backing up a thumb drive as a source. had an issue where the volume showed unavailable as a source (marked with a tilde).

 

/Volumes folder shows it is mounted under the expected name. that's what was the issue in the past where a volume has been unavailable.

 

decided to remove the volume from the source list in the hopes that it would reappear as available after a dismount and remount. bad idea.

 

retrospect somehow remembers that it has been removed and offers *no* way to add it back in as a source.

 

the "+" button evidently only refers to remote sources. 127.0.0.1 does nothing.

 

tried repartition. nope. tried different name for partition. nope. tried GUID as apposed to APM. nope. if i divide the stick into two partitions, the second partition shows as available.

 

what the heck?

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Between the dismount and remount did you stop the engine? It may be a problem that the engine got confused due to the dismount. I would close the console and then stop the engine, mount the USB drive, start the engine, start the console and see if it shows in sources.

If it works you may see it only as drive and not as a client.

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Between the dismount and remount did you stop the engine?

 

yes, i had. also tried restarting the mac. still gone.

 

this morning, i worked around the issue. stopped the engine. used time machine to restore config80.dat from a time before i deleted the thumb drive from sources. started the engine.

 

that got the volume to appear. downside is i lost the records of the backups done last night.

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the carryon4a USB thumb drive dropped again and there is no indication of what the problem is. i have to stop and start the retrospect engine to get it available. i can then manually back it up.

 

i think someone said somewhere there is a way to force more logging output. if some one can point me to those instructions, i'd appreciate it.

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Retrospect 8.2 on OSX 10.6.4 on a Macbook pro.

was backing up a thumb drive as a source

 

This is a pretty minimal description of your setup.

 

 

/Volumes folder shows it is mounted under the expected name

 

- Is this physical device local to the Engine host machine?

- Is there a user logged into the Finder on that machine?

- Does the volume show up in the Finder of the Engine host machine?

 

 

decided to remove the volume from the source list in the hopes that it would reappear as available after a dismount and remount

 

Volumes on physical devices that are directly attached to the Engine host machine do not need to be added to the Source list; they show in that list by default.

 

Given that, there is no way provided to remove such volumes from the Source list! So how did you accomplish that?

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Sorry i did not respond earlier. i thought i would get email alerts.

 

This is a pretty minimal description of your setup.

 

retrospect backs up to a media set on the firewire drive attached to the mac. it uses a proactive script with 7 sources selected--5 internal partitions, the mounted USB thumb drive, and a mounted volume which is actually a dmg on the USB drive. this has all worked this way for years.

 

- Is this physical device local to the Engine host machine?

- Is there a user logged into the Finder on that machine?

- Does the volume show up in the Finder of the Engine host machine?

 

yes to all 3. the USB drive is directly plugged in to the USB port on the left side. it is always in that port.

 

Volumes on physical devices that are directly attached to the Engine host machine do not need to be added to the Source list; they show in that list by default.

 

Given that, there is no way provided to remove such volumes from the Source list! So how did you accomplish that?

 

maybe USB drives are treated differently. all i did was highlight the drive in the source list and click "remove". drive gone, never to be gotten back.

 

since my config restore to get back the drive, and maybe since updating to retrospect 8.2, backing up of the thumb drive fails with

 

> Can't access volume Carryon4A, error -1102 ( drive missing/unavailable)

 

the drive is available before the proactive script starts, then fails with that message and is marked unavailable. i can stop and start the retrospect engine and immediately run a manual script and successfully back up the drive.

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maybe USB drives are treated differently. all i did was highlight the drive in the source list and click "remove". drive gone, never to be gotten back.

 

I tested this before my earlier post and am looking again at a Mac Mini running the Retrospect 8.2 Engine, with a USB thumb drive (single HFS+ partition) connected.

 

From the Console on a networked machine I see the thumb drive's volume in the Sources list.

 

Selecting volume in the Sources list, the only icons available in the toolbar are "Add," "Add Favorite" and "Erase." The "Remove" icon is grey and not available.

 

From the list itself, the 'Browse" button is available, and shows the contents of the volume; does this button work for you?

 

...a mounted volume which is actually a dmg on the USB drive.

 

How exactly have you configured this? Is this virtual volume available when there is no user logged in to the Finder on the Engine host machine?

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Selecting volume in the Sources list, the only icons available in the toolbar are "Add," "Add Favorite" and "Erase." The "Remove" icon is grey and not available.

 

I see the same thing but right now the drive is available. when i did the remove, retrospect had marked it unavailable.

 

...a mounted volume which is actually a dmg on the USB drive.

 

How exactly have you configured this? Is this virtual volume available when there is no user logged in to the Finder on the Engine host machine?

 

it's just a standard read write dmg file. when i log in with the usb thumb drive inserted or if i insert it later, the thumb drive mounts on the desktop. i double-click it to open a window, then double-click the dmg in the window to mount it.

 

if i'm not logged in, i expect the dmg file is not mounted. However, the mac is always logged in at night when the backup runs.

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Can you test with a different physical USB mass storage device?

 

Flash memory in these guys are optimized for low price; isolating the hardware should be a first step.

 

i did a few things at the same time--

 

- removed the .DS_Store file in the /Volumes folder.

 

- unmounted the USB stick in my standard account, logged in as an admin account, mounted and unmounted the USB stick, logged out then back in as a standard account, and mounted the USB stick.

 

- created a separate proactive script to run a few minutes earlier than the original which has just the USB stick in it.

 

- inserted a different USB stick in the other port and added it to the original proactive backup script.

 

Results--

 

the original USB stick running in a new proactive script, backed up.

 

the new USB stick running in the original proactive script did not back up. the stick shows as unavailable in retrospect. stopping and starting the engine made it available.

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Which makes it impossible to garner any helpful data.

 

well, i did most of this stuff before you came back with your suggestion.

 

the old stick backed up last night but is right now marked unavailable. FYI, the old stick was replaced two months ago.

 

as this stuff was all working for years and stopped working around the 8.2 update, it seems likely to me it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

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it seems likely to me it's a software issue, not a hardware one.

 

It's always reasonable to pay attention to one's Gut Feeling, but without some steps-to-reproduce it's difficult to know.

 

There seem to be multiple issues involved, but one thing you reported is Retrospect's Engine is loosing track of a logical volume of a particular hardware storage device, after which the program is not recognizing even newly formatted logical volumes on that same device.

 

Mounting volumes happens at a lower level then Retrospect, which simply takes advantage of OS X's handling of file systems. When you are in the state where the Engine does not recognize a volume on a hardware device, what does the terminal "mount" command show? What does Disk Utility show?

 

If you restart the Engine host machine (with the storage device physically connected) and don't log in under any account, can you see the Source listed if you connect from the Console running on another networked machine?

 

The whole "log-in/log-out as admin-user/standard-user" stuff makes me nervous...

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It's always reasonable to pay attention to one's Gut Feeling, but without some steps-to-reproduce it's difficult to know.

 

agreed. the proactive script appears to be knocking it down. is there some kind of setting to increase logging so we get a little more info out of retrospect?

 

There seem to be multiple issues involved, but one thing you reported is Retrospect's Engine is loosing track of a logical volume of a particular hardware storage device, after which the program is not recognizing even newly formatted logical volumes on that same device.

 

agreed. there's the issue of not being able to add back the device. this appears to be a retrospect problem in that it allows an unavailable device to be deleted but allows no method to re-add it if it turns out the delete is an error. It appears to know the physical device and partition in the device. creating two partitions and moving the "data" to the second partition allows retrospect to see it again.

 

NOTE: the first partition is still unseen.

 

There's this second issue where the proactive script is knocking the device offline to retrospect. That's the one consuming most of this thread and appears to be the root cause.

 

Mounting volumes happens at a lower level then Retrospect, which simply takes advantage of OS X's handling of file systems. When you are in the state where the Engine does not recognize a volume on a hardware device, what does the terminal "mount" command show? What does Disk Utility show?

 

the device is fully accessible in the finder. it is mounted on the desktop. i can read and write into it. it is just retrospect that thinks the device is unavailable (with a tilde).

 

If you restart the Engine host machine (with the storage device physically connected) and don't log in under any account, can you see the Source listed if you connect from the Console running on another networked machine?

 

you mean restart the mac and leave it sit at the login screen while i check what retrospect sees from elsewhere? this may be a problem for me to check. I'm having some sort of goofy networking issue going out and in to my mac. sigh.

 

The whole "log-in/log-out as admin-user/standard-user" stuff makes me nervous...

 

i only do that trying to figure out why the USB stuff is not working. everyday use on the mac, I'm in a standard account. retrospect backs up while I'm logged into that account.

 

if the USB stuff keeps failing, I'm considering dropping to the previous retrospect version to see if the problem goes away.

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Out of curiosity, I tried this. Fired up my test machine with 8.2 on it with no USB drive (FAT-32 formatted) attached. Plugged in the USB drive. Drive did *not* show.

 

Stopped/started the engine with USB drive attached.

 

Console shows the USB drive.

 

But selecting the drive does *not* light up the "Remove" icon as Dave indicated above as well. So I'm very curious as to how that happened, too...

 

(And, with the console open I ejected/reattached the USB drive and it disappeared/reappeared in "Sources" without needing to restart the engine.)

 

 

A couple of questions not asked above:

 

Is this US-English version of Retrospect and/or Mac OSX?

 

What is the volume name of the USB stick?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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But selecting the drive does *not* light up the "Remove" icon as Dave indicated above as well. So I'm very curious as to how that happened, too...

 

(And, with the console open I ejected/reattached the USB drive and it disappeared/reappeared in "Sources" without needing to restart the engine.)

 

But "remove" will be available if you can get retrospect to think the drive is unavailable (marked with a tilde).

 

back up the stick. then re-partition it into two partitions and name the second partition the same as the first. i think retrospect will now see the partition as a different one and the first will still be in the source list marked with a tilde. that one, you can highlight and remove.

 

then repartition the stick back to the original format. i'll bet retrospect will not show you the USB stick now. you removed the partition and you cannot get it back.

 

By the way, my USB stick is partitioned APM format with HFS extended for the partition.

 

Is this US-English version of Retrospect and/or Mac OSX?

 

yes.

 

What is the volume name of the USB stick?

 

Carryon4A

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what does the terminal "mount" command show? What does Disk Utility show?

 

the device is fully accessible in the finder. it is mounted on the desktop. i can read and write into it.

That doesn't answer the question asked.

 

 

this appears to be a retrospect problem in that it allows an unavailable device to be deleted but allows no method to re-add it if it turns out the delete is an error

 

You state this as if it's fact, with no concrete steps to reproduce what you assert is a problem. My Gut Feeling is that this is not how the program behaves.

 

back up the stick. then re-partition it into two partitions and name the second partition the same as the first. i think retrospect will now see the partition as a different one and the first will still be in the source list marked with a tilde. that one, you can highlight and remove.

 

The above is unclear.

"...re-partition it into two partitions and name the second partition the same as the first"

 

You don't mean start with a single partition (foo) and then repartition into two partitions named both named "foo," do you?

 

Do you mean start with single partition foo and then repartition into two partitions, with only the second new partition named foo?

 

then repartition the stick back to the original format. i'll bet retrospect will not show you the USB stick now. you removed the partition and you cannot get it back.

 

Not sure what the wager should be, but here's what I tried:

 

 

Macintosh Mini Core Duo

Mac OS X 10.6.3

Retrospect Engine from 8.2.0 (399) install

 

Launch Retrospect (Console application) from networked Macintosh and connect to Engine host machine.

 

- Observe Sources list

- Connect empty USB flash mass storage device (1 partition, HFS+) "foo" to Engine host machine

- Observe Sources list auto-populates with 'foo' (with unprotected, unscheduled icon)

- Add "foo" to a scheduled script

- Observe Source list icon changes to "scheduled"

- On Engine host machine, launch Disk Utility

- Select physical drive from list and click "Eject" button

- Observe drive disappear entirely from Disk Utility list

- Observe in Retrospect volume remains in Sources list

- Run scheduled Script; observe Script fail with

Can't access volume foo, error -1102 ( drive missing/unavailable)

- Observe in Sources list volume icon changes to "Unavailable"

- Select volume and click "Remove" icon

- Observe volume disappear from Sources list

 

- On Engine host machine, remove and reinsert USB drive

- Observe on Retrospect 'foo' returns to the Sources list.

 

So in this way Retrospect is behaving as expected.

 

- Repeat steps above up-to and including "Observe in Sources list volume icon changes to "Unavailable""

 

- Take USB drive to another computer

- Use Disk Utility to partition drive to 2 partitions

Partition 1: tigger

Partition 2: foo

 

- Insert USB drive in Engine host machine

- Observe Sources list auto-populates with tiger and a second instance of foo

 

- Select unavailable instance of foo and click "Remove"

- Observe other instance remains

- Observe original instance of "foo" is no longer shown in Sources field for the Script used above.

 

- Remove USB drive from Engine host machine

- On different Mac, repartition to single partition "foo"

 

- Return USB drive to Engine host machine

- Observe "foo" auto-populate in Sources list

 

In all instances, Retrospect is behaving as expected/desired.

 

It would be interesting to repeat the same steps with no user logged in to the Engine host machine, but I can't on this machine tonight.

 

 

 

What exactly is it you are seeing?

 

 

 

 

Dave

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The old stick successfully ran in its own proactive script. It is presently marked though as unavailable.

 

The new stick ran as part of the original proactive script just fine and is still available.

 

what does the terminal "mount" command show? What does Disk Utility show?

 

the device is fully accessible in the finder. it is mounted on the desktop. i can read and write into it.

 

 

That doesn't answer the question asked.

 

Sorry. I didn't see the point. the volume looks normal in disk utility.

 

Here is the mount output reflecting things as they are as of this morning. Remember, Retrospect sees Carryon4A as unavailable.

 

mount

/dev/disk0s3 on / (hfs, local, journaled)

devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)

/dev/disk0s2 on /Volumes/MacOSX7 (hfs, local, journaled)

/dev/disk0s4 on /Volumes/MacOSX5 (hfs, local, journaled)

/dev/disk0s5 on /Volumes/MacOSX4 (hfs, local, journaled)

/dev/disk0s6 on /Volumes/UserHD (hfs, local, journaled)

map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)

map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)

/dev/disk2s10 on /Volumes/MaxBkOSX61 (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

/dev/disk1s10 on /Volumes/MaxBkTMOSX62 (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

/dev/disk1s12 on /Volumes/MaxBkTMDVD62 (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)

/dev/disk2s12 on /Volumes/MaxBk01 (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

/dev/disk1s14 on /Volumes/MaxBkTM012 (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled)

/dev/disk3s2 on /Volumes/Carryon4A (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

/dev/disk5s3 on /Volumes/Carryon32 (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners)

/dev/disk7s2 on /Volumes/Notes (hfs, local, nodev, nosuid, journaled, noowners, mounted by bolzanm)

 

Not sure what the wager should be, but here's what I tried:

 

you basically did what i suggested. You observed different results than i did. Darn.

 

A few points of differences--

 

- My stick is formatted APM. you did not say what you did with yours.

 

- i ran on OSX 10.6.4.

 

- I did the repartitioning on the same mac running Retrospect.

 

- you basically forced the finder and retrospect to match status. in my case, Retrospect saw the volume unavailable but the volume was present in the Finder just fine.

 

What exactly is it you are seeing?

 

I'm seeing a volume in retrospect marked with a tilde. it is fully available in the finder, disk utility, and the mount command. only retrospect has the status wrong.

 

i just tried to run a manual backup of Carryon4A while it is unavailable in Retrospect and i get--

 

Normal backup using BK-Immed, MBkP disk at 8/27/10

To Media Set BK-FBack01AN...

> Can't access volume Carryon4A, error -1102 ( drive missing/unavailable)

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So, if I get what you were doing and try to reproduce it here (I have 10.6.4):

 

Your USB stick was originally one partition called "Carryon4A", right?

 

This is what you first added to retrospect and used it without issue (right?)

 

At some point you created a second partition on the USB stick so *both* partitions were called "Carryon4A" (right?)

 

(If so, did you use DU for this and just change the Volume scheme from "Current" to "Two Partitions" and give them both the same name?)

 

At this point -- I'm not sure I get what you saw Retrospect present. Just *one* (not two) tilda-ed "Carryon4A" source which you were able to remove?

 

If so, you then repartitioned the stick so it only had *one* "Carryon4A" partition and *that* is the Source you are unable to readd.

 

 

Do I have the above correct? If so, I can try that here.

 

 

 

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Your USB stick was originally one partition called "Carryon4A", right?

 

This is what you first added to retrospect and used it without issue (right?)

 

yes. to elaborate, there are two dmg files in the stick, one of which is mounted and explicitly backed up as a volume also.

 

At some point you created a second partition on the USB stick so *both* partitions were called "Carryon4A" (right?)

 

not exactly. at the point where the drive went unavailable, i removed it from retrospect. when i ejected and re-added the stick, it would not show up in retrospect (did in the finder). in trying to get this back, at one point i repartitioned the stick into 2 partitions. that's when i found that retrospect would not see the first partition of that stick, no matter its size.

 

i then went back and repartitioned back to 1 volume. still no volume. i restored the retrospect config file from before i did the delete. that made the first partition visible in retrospect again.

 

NOTE: the stick is APM. i used disk utility (change "current" to 2, etc), rename the second partition carryon4A.

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Your USB stick was originally one partition called "Carryon4A", right?

 

This is what you first added to retrospect and used it without issue (right?)

 

yes. to elaborate, there are two dmg files in the stick, one of which is mounted and explicitly backed up as a volume also.

 

At some point you created a second partition on the USB stick so *both* partitions were called "Carryon4A" (right?)

 

not exactly. at the point where the drive went unavailable, i removed it from retrospect..

 

 

 

So what we *can't* reproduce is the "point where the drive went unavailable". Making additional partitions on the stick had nothing to do with this, then.

 

 

So, to step back further...

 

You had one partition called "Carryon4A" that had (among other stuff?) a .dmg file on it.

 

When you plugged in the stick, you double-clicked to mount the .dmg (right?)

 

At this point -- what was the name of the "volume" that was mounted from the .dmg? Same or different than the stick name?

 

 

Did the .dmg "volume" show as a source? (I can't get it to do that.)

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As I suggested upthread, in an attempt to avoid confusion, there are multiple factors in play here, and the only way to get a handle on things is to isolate the different factors.

 

In general, there are three causes for things Going Wrong:

The most common cause is good old User Error. Since this configuration had been used for a while before with no problems, I'm less inclined to suspect this right now.

 

The more likely User Error is the actual cause, the more likely the user suspects it's a software defect. Bugs introduced in new versions (such as 8.1 to 8.2) are trivially easy to test for (assuming reproducible steps) by regressing to the older version and seeing if the problem goes away.

 

And lastly, hardware defects can often cause software to malfunction. This can be hard or easy to test, depending on the cost of the hardware and the depth of the user's pockets.

 

Breaking this up into the two most clearly identified issues:

1- At some point and for some reason, a locally attached storage device goes "unavailable" in Retrospect

 

2- After the unavailable volume is manually removed from the Source list, re-connecting the hardware containing that volume does _not_ result in the volume auto-populating in the Sources list

 

and 2-A might be, even after reinitialization and/or repartition of the hardware, the behavior of the hardware within Retrospect is unexpected.

 

 

 

you basically did what i suggested. You observed different results than i did.

Since the exception proves the rule, we can safely say the following is untrue:

 

"...(there) appears to be a retrospect problem in that it allows an unavailable device to be deleted but allows no method to re-add it if it turns out the delete is an error"

 

 

We don't know if 1 and 2 are directly related or not, although it's reasonable to suspect that they are. A storage device connected to the Engine host Macintosh should auto-populate its volumes to Retrospect's Sources list every time; my tests show that it does this even when I _try_ to cause it to fail.

 

So what is different for you? Your hardware is different from mine, but testing on different hardware might not be possible for you (other then the different USB drive you tried with).

 

You also show more physical devices connected to your host Mac then I do:

 

/dev/disk0s2

/dev/disk0s3

/dev/disk0s4

/dev/disk0s5

/dev/disk0s6

/dev/disk1s10

/dev/disk1s12

/dev/disk1s14

/dev/disk2s10

/dev/disk2s12

/dev/disk3s2

/dev/disk5s3

/dev/disk7s2

 

I have no concrete ideas of what might be going wrong, but the only way to get closer is to steer clear of the Wild Geese and avoid unhelpful tests.

 

 

 

Dave

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Breaking this up into the two most clearly identified issues:

 

1- At some point and for some reason, a locally attached storage device goes "unavailable" in Retrospect

 

2- After the unavailable volume is manually removed from the Source list, re-connecting the hardware containing that volume does _not_ result in the volume auto-populating in the Sources list

 

and 2-A might be, even after reinitialization and/or repartition of the hardware, the behavior of the hardware within Retrospect is unexpected.

 

good summary, Dave.

 

You had one partition called "Carryon4A" that had (among other stuff?) a .dmg file on it.

 

When you plugged in the stick, you double-clicked to mount the .dmg (right?)

 

yes

 

At this point -- what was the name of the "volume" that was mounted from the .dmg? Same or different than the stick name?

 

Different. it's called "Notes".

 

Did the .dmg "volume" show as a source? (I can't get it to do that.)

 

yes. it's a read write dmg. kind of interesting that your volume does not show as a source. in case it matters, the volume already existed as a source when i upgraded to 8.2.

 

Yeah -- I wondered about all those Volumes as well.

 

It's a MacBook Pro -- how many devices do you have connected to it (and how are they attached?) You appear to have 5 partitions of the internal hard disk (disk0xx)

 

but 5 other disks attached as well?

 

yes, the internal is divided into 5 partitions.

 

attached via a firewire hub is a 2 drive box. one drive has 2 partitions on it; the other 3.

 

attached to a USB port is the problematic stick. it contains a dmg file which is also mounted.

 

the proactive script backs up the 5 internal partitions; the USB stick which basically has 2 dmg files on it (but the dmg file which represents the mounted Notes disk is excluded from backup); and the mounted Notes volume.

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