Workgroup Loosing Clients

[bzapiec]

I am running Retrospect 8.2.0 (399) on a Mac OS 10.5.9 server on a network with about 30 mac and windows clients. They are all on the same class II subnet (i.e. 10.11.XXX.XXX). Some clients have static some have dynamic IPs. all are assigned via DHCP, all are connected via ethernet. The clients are readily found and added to the server via multicast having selected the correct interface. They generally work that day, and perhaps for a few days afterwards. The number of days before they have to be re-added is not consistent and not equal for all machines. Although most clients are updated, some are still running older versions. Adding clients via name, ip, or multicast doesn't appear to make a difference.

 

Despite all this heterogeneity, after a few days, every client stops working and gives the error: Can't access backup client *******, error -530 ( backup client not found)

 

Each time this happens, the only fix appears to be to remove the client and re-add it, then re-add it to the scripts. Needless to say, this is quite annoying and not how software should work. Restarting the retrospect server software, the server, or the clients does not help.

 

I have posted this a many months ago and unfortunately couldn't get an answer.I'm hoping this time someone can please help me sort this out.

 

Many thanks!

Edited September 12, 2011 by NeuroGuy

[Guest Steve Maser]

Can you give all of your clients static DHCP addresses? I find things work very well if all my clients have a static address.

[bzapiec]

While it's certainly a possibility, the addresses are unlikely to be a cause as they are in all effective terms, static.

An IP may change once a year or so but it's a rare event, they are simply not guaranteed to be static. For the time scale of retrospect's failures, they are static.

[Guest Steve Maser]

Running DHCP all depends on how you manage your lease times. It's certainly not unexpected (at least here) -- for example -- for machines that are set to get a DHCP dynamic address to power down on Friday and then get a *new* dynamic IP when they boot up on Monday. The lease times are never set for more than 24 hours by the people that manage DHCP.

 

Which is why I run static DHCP on all the computer I back up...

[DSPESG]

[E]rror: Can't access backup client *******, error -530 ( backup client not found)

 

Each time this happens, the only fix appears to be to remove the client and re-add it, then re-add it to the scripts. Needless to say, this is quite annoying and not how software should work. Restarting the retrospect server software, the server, or the clients does not help.

 

I’d be interested in the answer as well, as Retrospect just decided to −530 on all our servers last night. They’re on fixed IPs, statically reserved by the DHCP server by Ethernet ID. It’s really annoying, to say the least. I shouldn’t have to constantly delete and add clients to the server!

[bzapiec]

Quite honestly ridiculous and unprofessional are better adjectives when thinking about this, but I feel like a fool admitting that I've had to put up with this from Retrospect since 8 came out. I stayed on hoping that it would eventually get better as I had previously good experiences with Retrospect and wanted to stay loyal - now i just feel like I've been made a fool of. If the next update doesn't come out soon, if they try to charge for it, or if this problem persists, I'll cut my losses and jump ship to literally ANYTHING else at this point.