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Local media gone offline


binba

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Hi everyone,

 

At some point last week, Retrospect decided that my volume changed fundamentally and now most of my scripts are "broken".

 

Retrospect 8.2.0 (399), Intel Xserve 8-core, 12GB RAM, OS X 10.6.4, source is a direct-attached SAS enclosure, destination is a NAS volume. Logged in ("in finder") as the local admin.

 

 

1. The media sets are all locked - that's easy to fix, I just unlock them.

 

2. In the Sources list, I have two copies of my local source volume. One with all the correct favorite folders, offline and with the option to Remove it. The second is online, with no favorites.

 

3. Scripts abort within a few seconds with error -1102 (drive missing/unavailable).

 

4. If I redefine the favorites in the new record of the source and update the scripts, they halt on "Needs Media". If I Choose Media, it instructs me to select the media set folder, but there's no "select" option - only "Add". So pointing to the right folder doesn't do anything.

 

5. Scripts that backup other remote machines to (locked) file media sets are still working.

 

 

 

* Is the issue with my source volume, destination media sets, or both?

 

* This is not the first time I've seen this happen. How do I rectify the situation - without blowing up and redoing/updating all my favorites, scripts and media sets?

 

Thanks,

Drew

 

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More findings:

 

The catalog files in the media sets point to /Volumes/NAS/catalog.rbc

 

When I log in, the NAS mounts correctly as /Volumes/NAS. But by the time I launch Retrospect, /Volumes contains both "NAS" and "NAS-1". NAS-1 has a no-access stop sign on it which I can't do anything about (e.g., sudo chown is not permitted).

 

When I go to to browse it via retrospect (in Sources or in Locate under Media Sets), only "NAS-1" shows up.

 

RetroEngine is running as root, Retrospect is running as the local admin I'm logged in as.

 

 

It's as if Retrospect and OSX live in alternate realities... each seeing its own version of the NAS that the other can't access.

 

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A few things to clear up:

 

destination is a NAS volume.

 

Backup destinations aren't volumes; Backup destinations are [color:purple]Media Sets[/color].

 

The media sets are all locked

 

A Media Set is the _set_ of Catalog file + media Member(s). What file or files are you discussing?

What exactly do you mean by "locked" in this context? Is this something you did intentionally? Or are you reporting something unexpected? What did you "unlock?"

 

If I redefine the favorites in the new record of the source and update the scripts, they halt on "Needs Media"

 

Unlikely the two are causally related; it's just that the successful access to the source of your backup is revealing the problem with the Member of your media set.

 

When I log in, the NAS mounts correctly as /Volumes/NAS

Yeah, don't do that.

 

When you mount a remote share point as the Finder user (without Retrospect involved), Mac OS X uses its true, unique name (/Volumes/NAS/).

 

Should you then step Retrospect through mounting that same Volume, Mac OS X can't allow an additional volume to have the same name as one already mounted, so OS X appends the integer to the name. This is hidden from Finder users, but not hidden from Retrospect.

 

At this point, depending on the steps involved, you've mucked everything up; either Retrospect will look for /Volumes/NAS/ but only see /Volumes/NAS-1/ (which it ignores) or vice versa; Retrospect will look for /Volumes/NAS-1/ but gets /Volumes/NAS/ by the operating system.

 

In general, don't manually mount a remote share point in any other manner or as any other UID if you want Retrospect to reliably access it.

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Backup destinations aren't volumes; Backup destinations are [color:purple]Media Sets[/color].

I should've just said "I'm backing to a NAS volume"...

Or "my destination's media set consists of a NAS volume."

 

What exactly do you mean by "locked" in this context? Is this something you did intentionally? Or are you reporting something unexpected? What did you "unlock?
"

I mean when a media set has a lock icon net to it and you click Unlock.

 

 

When I log in, the NAS mounts correctly as /Volumes/NAS
Yeah, don't do that.

 

That was the source of most of the problems. I inherited this system and the procedure to mount the volume in Finder indeed messed things up.

 

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I ended up having to modify all the media set members locations, redo all the favorites of the local source, and update all the scripts.

 

I ran all the scripts successfully on Thursday, and they all failed again over the weekend. I cleaned up the mounting points list, pointed all media sets to "NAS", restarted to get rid of the -1 -2 -3, my /Volumes/ list is now clean with only "NAS" - and still some of the scripts reverted to "NAS-1".

 

This does seem to relate to topic 34179.

 

 

More seriously, now all my scripts are stuck on 'waiting', with status "Waiting for SOURCE".

As said, my source is a direct-attached local volume and I haven't touched it. It shows up fine in the Sources window, its status is green ('Backed Up'), the favorites are correct, and I can freely browse the volume. It's referring to the right path, no "-1" issues on the source side.

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For the past two days the status for any Disk backup has been "Needs Media."

If it means anything, I'm also unable to add members to Disk media sets.

 

To reiterate, the location of the media set member matches the /Volumes/ mounting point.

 

Downgraded to 8.1.626, no difference.

 

 

This seems to match threads 33714 and 30717 , both having dozens of posts and no resolution. My data sets are larger than 1TB and I'm not yet ready to blow up my NAS and redo its RAID, especially since this setup has worked well for half a year.

 

I called support, they did some very basic troubleshooting and escalated the case (still a 24-48 response time). If anyone has any additional ideas they'd be appreciated.

 

 

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Hi Dave,

I know you appreciate accuracy, so I tried to make it reproducible and comprehensive. What I do is:

 

1. Restart the NAS

2. Restart the host machine (OS X server 10.6.4)

In Retrospect,

3. Sources -> Add Share -> afp://nashostname.mydomain.com/NAS

4. It authenticates immediately and I can browse the volume. The mounting point in /Volumes/ is "NAS". In Retrospect, Sources->NAS->Summary->Overview->Path is "/Volumes/NAS/"

 

5. Add a Disk media set, let's say "Test". (Catalog in the default location, Library/Application Supoprt/...)

6. When adding a new member I select NAS. The location for member "1-Test" is /Volumes/NAS/

 

7. Backup with the Backup Assistant

8. Pick a favorite folder from a local source

9. "Test" as the Media Set

10. Start Now

 

Immediately, I get a blinking question mark for the activity, with the status "Needs media." If I click Choose Media, it says "Select folder: 1-Test". The only option is Add, which if clicked just adds new members as subfolders of 1-Test.

 

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1-10: It should work that way.

 

You confirmed that there is free space on /NAS? And that Retrospect sees that free space in the Members tab?

 

What happens if you change #7 and craft a Script first, then run that (bypassing the Backup Assistant)?

 

 

The only option is Add, which if clicked just adds new members as subfolders of 1-Test.

 

Yeah, I reported this shortly after 8.2 was released (after snarkly telling another poster that he must have done something wrong if there were nested Member folders; oops!). Robin posted the bug number, so they have it in their stack.

 

 

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The NAS volume has 3.6TB free and Retrospect sees it in the members tab.

 

I used the backup assistant just to simplify the steps; creating a script does the exact same thing.

 

BTW backups to file media sets on the NAS work, it's disk media sets that all fail.

 

 

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it's disk media sets that all fail

 

Since the steps you are taking should work, and do work for me and others, it's reasonable to look at the non-software aspects of your setup and see how they might be unique.

 

Although the term "NAS" appears (exclusive of this post) 36 times so far in the thread, I don't see a description of the specific hardware being used to serve the share point.

 

Have you tried setting up another Macintosh on your network with File Sharing, and use that as your NAS to repeat steps 1-10 above? If such a test were successful that might point you towards the cause of the failures...

 

 

Dave

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It was the prefs file.

 

Roxio support asked me for the UTX log (I really should've looked at it at the beginning), and I noticed a lot of -644 "can't save configuration" errors. I then saw my config80.dat has balooned to 890MB, and a copy for the week before was 1.2GB.

 

I assume the version upgrade wasn't kind to the config file. Next week I'll have access to our off-site media set so I might see how big the config file was before the upgrade, before I recycle everything...

 

I completely removed Retrospect including Library/Application Support, and reinstalled. Everything runs fine now. A new config file is 450KB and after defining my dozen scripts and media sets it's now at 83MB. I'll keep an eye on it for sure.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

An update if anyone encounters this thread: the root of the problem lies in an open bug in Retrospect 8 Mac; the "Past Activities" section can fill up the config80.dat file and make it swell up.

 

I had 112 entries in the Past pane, and as soon as I cleared that list and restarted the engine, my config file plummeted from hundreds of MB's to 785KB.

So I now have a diagnosis and a workaround, let's hope it gets fixed soon. :thumbup:

 

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This won't get solved unless (and until) the config80.dat file is split into parts, so that the "Past Activities" and some other parts are written separately, apart from the preferences.

 

It's been a request for at least over 18 years that we have been using Retrospect that (a) the config (preferences) file be made user-readable, and (B) that the config (preferences) file be split into parts so that the rarely-changed preferences proper don't get re-written as often (and thus the chance of corruption is reduced).

 

Don't hold your breath for this to ever get fixed. I gave up long ago, and just back up the file so that we can recover when (not if) the file becomes corrupted.

 

Russ

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