harvdog Posted September 23, 2010 Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 I applied the .341 update on Monday to 7.7 on my Server 2008 R2 box. It fixed a problem with backing up Mac clients (no more unknown MacOS error), but I have a new, more serious issue. During disk to tape back up, it seems that Retro is losing the location of the tapes, and pops up a dialog asking to find the back-up set. Options are choices or stop. I have to eject the tape, then reinsert it in a different drive in order for retro to see it again and continue. This occurs most often between the write and verify steps, but sometimes will occur in the middle of the verify action as well. I have tried recreating the back up sets, and scripts to no avail. The tape drives are LTO3 drives daisy chained via scsi-160. The hardware has been unchanged for a year. The only change is the update applied on Monday. Anyone have any ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 23, 2010 Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Are the tapes barcoded? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harvdog Posted September 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 They are not. I have two scsi chains. Each is on its own Adaptec card with 6 drives daisy chained. I'm within the scsi length limitation and the chains are terminated. This occurs on both scsi chains. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harvdog Posted September 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 The cards are Adaptec 29320LPE - Ultra 320 SCSI (so not 160s) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted September 23, 2010 Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Are the tapes barcoded? They are not. I would bet that this is the issue. If tapes are barcoded, then Retrospect knows where each tape is. If tapes are not barcoded, then Retrospect tries to remember where the tapes are by preserving a tape location cache. I suspect that there is a bug in the tape location cache. I haven't seen this because we, like most people, use barcoded tapes. I suspect that the testing at Retrospect may have been done on barcoded tapes, and that a bug was introduced at some point as versions changed. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harvdog Posted September 23, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2010 Crud. Well, I've sent a message to tech support. Hopefully they will have some resolution for me. If anyone else has any ideas in the meantime, I'd love to hear them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniels Posted September 24, 2010 Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 Are the drives individual or part of a library system? I don't have your setup but do use non-barcoded AIT-4 tapes for backup. However I have a single internal SCSI Sony/HP AIT-4 drive installed in the machine. I would try running the backup with only one drive attached and seeing if that works. I have a feeling that the daisy-chain is causing the problem and if you have that many drives it might be wise to invest in a library system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harvdog Posted September 24, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 I seriously doubt this is a hardware issue. The daisy chains have been stable for a year plus. The hardware hasn't been altered at all. The .341 update going in is where this started. Also, I run two daily scripts that each use 3-4 LTO-3 tapes. I can't run on a single drive. Thanks for the suggestions though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniels Posted September 24, 2010 Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 From another thread Mayoff said the only change made in .341 was the logos from EMC to Roxio. It seems really wierd that this small change would cause your setup to stop working. What exactly is status of the drives when Retrospect loses the location of a tape? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harvdog Posted September 24, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 No kidding? That is weird. That status is good. In the Devices window, I can see all the drives, and the tape names loaded in them. The dialog looking for the back up set sees it too. It just won't do anything until I pop the tape out and put it in another drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daniels Posted September 24, 2010 Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 Does it matter which drive you initially use or does it happen on all of them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harvdog Posted September 24, 2010 Author Report Share Posted September 24, 2010 It doesn't appear to matter which drive the tape starts out in. In further testing, I am running my scripts with verification off today, and they are proceeding with no hiccups. The next step will be to create from scratch a new back up to tape set (I don't recall if I've done this yet. A lot of other work going on simultaneously this week). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ernief Posted October 19, 2010 Report Share Posted October 19, 2010 I have the same problem and reverted to the previous 7.7 release as a result... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ernief Posted October 19, 2010 Report Share Posted October 19, 2010 BTW, different tape drives and interfaces were involved.... this affected a Quantum SuperLoader 3 LTO-2 SCSI autoloader as well as a Quantum Scalar i40 connected by SAS. Both controllers are ATTO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
harvdog Posted October 19, 2010 Author Report Share Posted October 19, 2010 I ended up going back to 7.6. 7.7 was giving me no end of trouble of one kind or another. I finally got a reply to my help ticket, and need to get them the information they asked for so hopefully the kinks can get worked out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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