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Retrospect Stuck in Closing - Survey


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Dear Retrospect Users,

 

 

 

Dantz is currently investigating an issue where Retrospect 6.5 will display the "closing" screen indefinitely at the end of a backup. Despite the continued cooperation of our users, Dantz has not yet been able to pinpoint the cause of this problem or reproduce it in house.

 

 

 

We would like to gather system information from any customer experiencing this issue. Please fill out the form attached to this post and send it to pacrimsupport@dantz.com

 

 

 

Thanks for your help,

 

The Dantz Technical Support Team

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We see the problem primarily on servers, running W2k Server.

We are running Retrospect 6.5, current service release, and have seen it occur on previous service releases as well.

We are current on our RDU, and have seen the error on every RDU since 6.5 came out.

We run Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition 8.x, and have disabled it on the affected machines without any impact.

 

The main servers still having a problem are P3 units, 800-933MHz. One is a Dual Processor.

1gb ECC RAM

We back up to rotating IDE hard disks in a removable USB carrier.

These are now Disk Backups

The problem seems to have settled almost exclusively to two systems, one running MS SQL Server 7.0, and the other running Exchange 2003. We ARE running the appropriate agents against both. If I rebuild the catalog, the next backup is fine. If I don't, 7 out of 10 times it will fail, either in closing or in "updating catalog file".

 

If really want to reproduce it, come to Wichita for a couple of days. We can show it to you, no problem. We'd kind of like to get it fixed, since several of our clients are totally screwed for backup.

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My client's Windows 2000 Advanced Server with a Pent III and 720 mb of RAM. Backup is stuck in closing. I have to end the task within Windows Task manager. When I attempt to open Retrospect 6.5 Single Server again, it takes a good 5-10 minutes for it to open up again. If I reboot the server and try to open up Retrospect, retrospect will function fine for about 2 weeks and then it gets very, very, very sluggish again.

 

 

 

They are backing up to an IDE HP DVD+/-R Writer. It's windows 2000 Advanced server with the latest patches/service packs applied. Atleast a couple gig of hard drive space free. Using administrator login for backup jobs. I am recycling media every night. The client doesn't always remember to switch DVD's so I just want them to make sure that they get a good full backup every night.

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Hello All,

 

Our first round of surveys show that every person reporting the problem is using Norton Anti Virus Corporate/Enterprise edition. So far this is the most obvious common factor.

 

Please let us know if you are seeing the stuck in closing problem and are _not_ using Symantec virus software.

 

One user has reported that disabling virus software during the backup seems to have resolved the problem. If possible please try running backups with virus protection turned off. This is of course not a permanent solution but it will help us narrow down the cause of the problem.

 

Thanks

Nate @ Dantz Technical Support

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Hi

 

Unfortunately there were very few details and I haven't seen any posts from him again. I get the feeling it was on the server side.

 

My theory is that the virus protection on the server side is preventing Retrospect from doing some tasks that normally happen at the end of a backup. Specifically:

 

-The contents of a temporary log file are written to the main Retrospect log and the temporary log is deleted.

-The catalog information for the backup is moved from a temporary catalog file into the main catalog file and the temporary catalog is deleted.

 

If possible I would try turning off virus protection for the folder where the Retrospect catalog file is stored and for the Retrospect settings folder. (c:\documents and settings\all users\application data\Retrospect)

 

Thanks

Nate

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  • 4 weeks later...

I get the stuck problem but it does not affect my backup jobs. I am running 6.5 Multiserver on an XP Pro machine that is also running the Symantec Antivrus client V. 8.00.0.9374. I cannot shut down the AV software as that would violate University policy and Also because it would be just plain stupid. When I shutdown this machine the Symantec client locks up too.

 

Scott Calman

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HI

 

Agreed, turning off virus software completely is not a viable option. We are still waiting for confirmation that turning off virus scans of the Retrospect settings folder and catalog files has an impact on the issue.

 

Thanks

Nate

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Retrospect Stuck in Closing Survey

Name (optional): Phillip Walters

Contact email: pwalters@linkline.com

 

OS Version: Windows 2000

Service Pack: 4

 

Retrospect Version (6.5.xxx): 6.5.350

Retrospect Driver Update (x.x.xxx):

Virus software: None

 

CPU Make/Model: Intel Pentium 4

CPU Speed: 1.5ghz

Number of CPUs: 1

Physical RAM: 256MB

 

Backup Device: Hard Drive

Backup Device Connection type: SATA

Retrospect Backup set type: File

 

Problem occur on client volumes only.

 

Additional information and comments:

Not running any virus software. Problem still occurs.

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Hello All,

 

One other piece of information we would like to get:

 

Can you please tell us what the client control panel says when the backup is stuck in closing? It should say something like "in use by...." or "ready"

 

Thanks

Nate @ Dantz

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  • 2 weeks later...

I used to experience the same problems, and at least for the last several weeks found a working solution: Installed W2K Sp4 on a system that was installed from the original windows CD, as opposed to using a drive image which was prepared for the DL360 servers. Installed only the very necessary software by a custom windows installation, without ISS. Updated the smart arrays drivers and bios. The servers have never been in a Windows Domain, never used Terminal servers (Timbuktu instead). I have one system running fine even with Trend Antivirus now, which I suspected in the first place. I have a Mac Retrospect 4.3 server running which is backing up the catalog files and settings of the active backup servers, which client I updated from 5.1 to 5.6. Also configured the number of "execution units" in the preferences to just 1. So far so good. The servers are running on 6.5.350 and are connected to a Adic 22 tape library. I have assigned drive slot 1 to the cleaning device instead of using the devices "autoclean" which was a pain in the wrist. Most clients are on 5.15 - I have trouble updating the clients from within Retrospect although the log shows success. But that maybe a different storry.

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I started having a few clients get stuck this way. Usually it is the same one. It just did it again this morning, here is what it says:

 

Server:

Retrospect Multi-Server NFR 6.5.350

Windows 2000 Professional

 

Client:

Retrospect Client 6.5.136

Windows 2003 SBS

 

It got stuck closing a disk-based backup (not a single file job, but the directory based type) to a striped Promise IDE RAID. The backup was a typical C: and E: backup of the machine, I don't believe it got to the second drive in the job. It says "in use by:" while it is stuck.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Running on XP Pro service pack 2. Have had the same problem and also nrescently had it blow out my config file which fixed the shut down problems but also blew away 3 months of intricate scripts, all my clients, Etc. Not the best solution. An interesting point... I had a backup of the conf65.dat and it was 337 MB in size... Yes, Megabytes, not kilopbytes. I called support about this incident and they were just as surprised as I was.

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