Jump to content

Reto Client crashes on OS X Server


emulator

Recommended Posts

Hi List...

 

We're using Retrospect Cient to back up an OS X Server 10.2.6 machine. Every now and then, the Retrospect client on the OS X Server will crash. It doesn't take the sever down, but it does sit there and eat CPU cycles like nothing you've ever seen. We cannot quit the Retro Client on the server via the Retro Client GUI. We cannot kill the retro processes (there are two of them) via the terminal. The only way that we can stop it is to use the Process Viewer and kill both retro client processes. We can then start the client back up again. However, doing this seems to slow server performance by about 40%. They only way to get things back up to speed is to restart the OS X Server.

 

I've noticed that most of the Retro client crashes happen when a backup is paused and restarted or halted completely. In both scenarios, we get the "...net retry <IP address of server>". That's when we know the client has crashed.

 

Any ideas on this?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Marc Hoffman

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dantz has released an update to the Retrospect Client software for Mac OS X. This update is compatible with Retrospect 5.0 for Macintosh as well as Retrospect 6.5 for Windows.

 

Changes made the new Macintosh client software include improved memory management on the client computer as well as a fix for the error -40 File positioning for retropds.22.

 

The new client installer can be downloaded from:

 

ftp://ftp.dantz.com/pub/cs/mac_client_5_1.sit

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cool! This worked fine. But....now I have another problem. I noticed that the latest client update for Windows (6.5) requires Retrospect 5.1 for Macintosh. I can't find any Retrospect 5.1 updates on the Dantz website; only 5.0x versions. Can you help me with this?

 

Marc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Retrospect 5.1 has not yet been released. A release date is not yet available.

 

Retrospect 6.5 for Windows will work with all previous client versions

 

Retrospect 5.0 for Macintosh will work with the 5.1 and earlier client, but is not compatible with the 6.5 Windows Client

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's some more info. The new client update seems to have caused my server to crash. OS X Server had restarted itself, but here's what I found in the Retro Logs (pretty much the same thing as with the older retro client):

 

- 5/23/2003 10:30:31 PM: Copying?

Trouble reading files, error 515 (Piton protocol violation).

5/23/2003 10:56:40 PM: Execution incomplete.

Remaining: 133154 files, 297.1 GB

Completed: 11263 files, 15.4 GB

Performance: 669.8 MB/minute

Duration: 00:26:09 (00:02:44 idle/loading/preparing)

 

Can't access volume, error 505 (client is reserved).

Can't access volume, error 505 (client is reserved).

Can't access volume, error 505 (client is reserved).

 

It appears that the retro client crashed in the middle of a backup four days ago. What do I need to do here? My long weekend full-backup failed, a process that normally takes about 15 hours to complete! I'm going to have to improvise to get a decent backup done before tomorrow.

 

Is the software I downloaded still in beta, since it's not officially listed on the Dantz website?

 

Marc

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I checked this out before posting here. I do not believe that it's a hardware issue at all. I checked my OS X Server logs, and just when the pitond process crashed, my CPU utilization went up to 90-100%, and no one was here using the server. This is what happened on the older version of the retro client; the client would crash, and server CPU resouces would be drained by the pitond and retro processes. All other services are working fine, and there are no errors on the network (I checked the switches via a web interface, and the backup station is working fine as well).

 

Any ideas on this? Sounds like a bug to me...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Since there has been no reply to this in a couple of days, I'm going to assume that there is something up here. I did find a solution to the problem, however. I completely removed the retro client from our OS X server and connected the backup device via SCSI to the server directly. The backups run faster (almost 1GB/minute), and the crashes have stopped...

 

Marc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's another question...

 

Is it possible for Retrospect to run on the OS X Server and perform automated backups when the server is in "log out" status? By this, I mean does the Finder have to be running in order for Retrospect to run automated? For security reasons, we make it a practise to log out of the server locally so that anyone wandering by cannot just start messing with things.

 

Thanks!

 

Marc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...