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8.2 catalog recovery


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Re: A1 - I copied the first 50 .rdb files to an internal hard disk. No problems with file copy. On the recatalog I saw the looping problem right away.

 

I then thought to use the lsof ( list open files ) terminal command

 

sudo lsof| grep "Media Set"

 

and this rapidly showed me that the recovery was stuck on file nr 0002. I removed 0002 and am proceeding to recover the first 1000 .rdb files. If that works, I'll make a manual copy of the catalog and add the next 1000 and run the rebuild to catch up. I hope I can repeat this until all 8000 are cataloged.

 

 

Re A2: Does this mean that I should manually copy the catalog to another location after retrospect terminates and back up the copy the next time?

 

Can catalogs be backed up if the RetroEngine is idle but running?

 

 

regards

Steve

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You can't backup the catalog of the media set you are backing up to.

 

You might be able to backup *other* catalogs for non-active media sets (admittedly, I've not tried this...).

 

What I do is just do a finder copy of my catalogs manually once a week to an external drive (when I do an archive of my backup sets.)

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  • 2 weeks later...

In conclusion.

 

Thanks' to everyone's generous help I was able to recover 99.8% of the backup data.

 

Here is what I learned.

1) Official support is now useless - the phone line did not work and the web based ticket was not opened for three weeks. It is now open but not resolved - I'll see how much longer it takes.

 

2) When rebuilding a catalog, you can freely move around the folders of the media set - I did this as some members were nested in others.

 

3) The .rdb files must stay in their respective media set member folder - you cannot merge folders together. - I split folders to track down the bad archive, but was obliged to put the files back in their original folders for the recatalog to work.

 

4) There was only 1 corrupted .rdb file - AA000002 was bad. All the messages about length errors on the hundreds of other .rdb files went away after I removed file #2 ! It seems there is an initial scan of all the .rdbs , followed by re-cataloging all the files contained in each .rdb.

 

5) In my case the recatalog was looping on .rdb file #2. I found this by monitoring the files being used by the Retrospect Engine:

 

ps ax|grep RetroEng

 

returns the pid of the Retrospect Engine, use the pid in the lsof command i.e:

 

sudo lsof -r 60m%H:%M -a -p 15381 +D /Volumes/Drobo/Retrospect_010/Retrospect/Media\ Set\ A

 

This shows the files in Media Set A that RetroEng is using and updates every minute.

 

From this I could see the initial scan of all the .rdb files followed by the successful re-cataloging of the first file and looping on the second.

 

6) You can start a full catalog recovery with the recatalog option. Then if you put more of the .rdb files back into the folders, or add more media set members, you can continue the recataloging process by choosing the rebuild option - it is not necessary to start from scratch.

 

6) Retrospect catalog is critical for performance and can be rebuilt. For my 4Tb Raid, the recatalog took 5 days. So it is better to keep a backup of the catalog.

 

7) Retrospect does not backup the catalog - as it is in use! Duplicate the catalog in order to backup a copy.

Don't make the duplicate when retrospect is running.

 

Thanks' again for all the helpful information.

 

regards

Steve Groom

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1- Ah Roxio, we had such high hopes for you.

2- This is good to know for sure.

3- This is also good to know for sure; bummer, though.

4- Sounds as if you were lucky.

5- Thanks for doing the lifting on the command; I'm gonna keep this for easy reference.

6- I would have expected this.

6- Keeping a backup of your Catalog(s) has always been a Best Practice; even when not completely current a copy can save tons of time on a Rebuild.

7- Since the Retrospect Engine is always running, if this were true it would be a problem. If the Media Set is not in use, the Catalog File is not open and can be safely copied by any method, including a Scheduled Copy Script in Retrospect (Copy does not use a Catalog).

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