Sheppard Posted April 10, 2004 Report Share Posted April 10, 2004 I wanted to upgrade my server from OS X 10.2 to 10.3 and understood I needed Retrospect 6 to ensure compatibility with AIT autoloaders plus it was supposed to handle DVD-RAM better -- so I took the plunge. Things seemed to be working fine for awhile until today when I went to do my first restore from DVD-RAM. Retrospect popped up a dialog asking me to configure the DVD drive or Retrospect wouldn't be able to use the drive. That was pretty strange since things were working fine. After reading the message it appears that I shouldn't have to do this procedure and it said I could click the Cancel button. The only buttons on the dialog were Ignore, Later and Configure... If I clicked Ignore, the device disappeared. If I clicked Later I could still see the device. I tried to let it configure the drive and it ejected the media, automatically sucked it back in and then ejected it again asking me to insert writable media. Bizarre!. It warned that configuration could take 2 to 200 minutes so I let it go. It said it was checking the disc and just sat there until I cancelled out of it quite a long time later. It wasn't accessing the drive during this time. The drive and media appear when I click on Configure Devices and click Later in response to the configuration warning so I don't know what this strange stuff is all about. The Configure Devices window reports the media as removable but clicking on the Device Status button and then the device pops up the dialog to configure the DVD drive again. The Finder icon on the desktop says DVD-RAM. Anyway, I had side 8 loaded and the restore required side 1. It said it was searching the disks for side 1 and hung. I could not cancel out and the only option was to force quit Retrospect. I was expecting it to pop up the window allowing me to eject the media and insert the correct media like it does in Retrospect 5. Nope. I tried variations on this procedure many times and at one time when I inserted a disc, the Finder asked if I wanted to initialize it just like it does when you insert a blank CD for burning. So I think some part of Retrospect and/or the Finder is confused about this device. I can revert back to Retrospect 5.0 and it has no trouble recognizing the DVD-RAM as just that, so this is a problem with the new, improved 6.0.193. I've tried: - trashing the preferences. - reinstalling Retrospect. - rebooting. - erasing the media with Retrospect. - erasing the media with Disk Utility. - letting it configure the drive several times (it did nothing each time). I can backup just fine but I cannot restore from DVD-RAM unless the required media is already inserted. This just isn't going to work if I have to restore a bunch of files from multiple discs. I don't know if this is related but the Backup Server is constantly flickering between "Checking media" and "Polling" even though all the media has been checked. It also consumes 35% CPU of a G4/400 while doing this. Any ideas as to why this suddenly started happening and how to get it to quit short of restoring 10.2 and Retrospect 5.0? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheppard Posted April 13, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 13, 2004 In my original post I said, "I can backup just fine but I cannot restore from DVD-RAM unless the required media is already inserted." Well, I can't backup properly either as I started a new DVD-RAM backup set today and it hung after the first side waiting for me to insert the second side with a "Searching for disk..." dialog. I inserted a new side, erased it with Disk Utility and it appeared on the Desktop but Retropsect did not see it and I had to force quit Retrospect again. So I can neither backup or restore properly with Retrospect and DVD-RAM. That's kind of serious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheppard Posted April 13, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 13, 2004 After Retrospect hung trying to switch media I had to force quit and restart it. The backup server then started again with the computer that had its backup interrupted and wrote to disc 2. When this was completed the backup server did not move on to the next client. It hung instead necessitating another force quit. It would then hang every time in the backup server waitiing for media. I tried rebuilding the catalog from the first disc and ignored the second disc. I also had Retrospect erase the second disc so that it was ready to be used. The backup server still hangs waiting for media every time now and must be force quit. I selected the Configure Devices window and Retrospect reported that the disc it had erased had damaged content. Since Retrospect is the only application writing to this media, it's causing the damage. My understanding is that Retrospect 6 is supposed to handle DVD-RAM much better than version 5 but I find it to be unusable. I would really appreciate any suggestions to get this working so I don't have to ask for a refund and roll back my server to 10.2 and Retrospect 5.0. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheppard Posted April 14, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 14, 2004 As the days wear on and not being able to do a backup I've tried various things. It now appears that the Backup Server cannot find the media but an Immediate Backup has no difficulty. It sees the same media that the Backup Server cannot and asks for new media when the disc is full, something that causes Backup Server to hang necessitating a force quit. So part of Retrospect has no trouble with DVD-RAM media and another part is seriously broken. My question to Dantz is, "What now?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheppard Posted April 15, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 15, 2004 It turns out there is a conflict with my SCSI attached Sony TSL-SA300C AIT-1 autoloader and removable media. If I turn off the autoloader, the removable media works fine. When Retrospect goes to find the next removable media in the set it hangs searching the drives for the next media if the AIT is on. One media type should have nothing to do with the other. OS X doesn't allow SCSI devices to be turned off and on. If it isn't on at boot up, Retrospect can't find it. Also, quitting Retrospect after turning off the AIT causes a kernel panic. Not a good thing to have happen on a server. Thus, it's not an option to turn off the AIT just to get removable media to work. I did try to tell Retrospect to ignore the AIT drive and autoloader by using the Device Status but when the backup server started it checked the media in the autoloader anyway! The backup server script for the AIT was inactive too but nothing seems to stop Retrospect from scanning the autoloader media. I had to quit out of Retrospect and relaunch it to get it to recognize that I wanted to ignore the AIT. Once it was really ignoring the AIT, then the removable media backup works. I verified this conflict easily by creating small 2.5 MB disk images as my removable media so that I could try various options quickly. Retrospect hangs every time it tries to use the next media as long as the AIT is powered on. Power off the AIT and Retrospect works as expected. This was not a problem with OS X 10.2.8 or 10.3.3 and Retrospect 5.0. One other problem I encountered was when I had two disk images erased by Disk Utility mounted at the same time. Even though the Finde saw them with different names, Retrospect's Configure Devices window was reporting them both with a volume name of (Erased). It is impossible to tell these two apart. The only way was to mount each image one at a time and use Retrospect to erase the media. I shouldn't have to do that. Retrospect should use the Finder's volume name. This AIT and removable media conflict should be easy for Dantz to confirm in your test lab. Please let me know what you find. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted April 15, 2004 Report Share Posted April 15, 2004 Hi My apologies for the slow response. What is the make and model of this dvd ram drive? How is it connected to the machine? What SCSI card are you using with your AIT loader? Do you have this same problem if you boot from the Retrospect 6.0 install CD? Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheppard Posted April 15, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 15, 2004 Quote: What is the make and model of this dvd ram drive? How is it connected to the machine? What SCSI card are you using with your AIT loader? You'll find that information below but please reread my last message and you will see that I can use disk images created from Disk Utility to duplicate the same symptoms as for the physical drive. I find creating a couple of 2.5 MB disk images best because they fill quickly causing Retrospect to ask for the next media. This allows you to test quickly without waiting for a 2.4 GB DVD-RAM image or physical disk to fill. You should be able to replicate this problem with these disk images and the following AIT (or maybe even others): The AIT-1 is a Sony TSL-SA300C, Revision L202 as the only device on an Adaptec 2930CU SCSI card, V 1.1.0 (latest available). The DVD-RAM drive is a LaCie branded Matshita DVD-RAM LF-D200, Revision A120 connected to an Orange Micro 930U SCSI card, V1.36 (latest available), although, as I said, you don't even need a real drive to create the problem. Quote: Do you have this same problem if you boot from the Retrospect 6.0 install CD? I downloaded the upgrade to version 6 so I do not have the install CD. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted April 16, 2004 Report Share Posted April 16, 2004 Hi You can actually download the image if you like: http://www.dantz.com/index.php3?SCREEN=kbase&ACTION=KBASE&id=28132 I'm sorry for not reading the previous post more closely. I know that is annoying. Any chance you can attach the AIT to your Orange micro card and run the same test using disk images? Adaptec SCSI cards are just plain no good under OSX in my experience. I don't think Apple supports the 2930 in OSX and Dantz doesn't support them either. Retrospect does some degree of polling for devices even when using a file or disk backup set. I wonder if that is contributing to the problem? Does Orange micro have an updated driver availible for OSX 10.3 One explaination for why this was not a problem in Retrosepct 5.0 is that Retrospect 5.0 did not include the updated SCSI support for G5s and Panther. Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheppard Posted April 16, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 16, 2004 Quote: Any chance you can attach the AIT to your Orange micro card and run the same test using disk images? Yes, I can try that although the reason I'm using the Adaptec card is because the Orange Micro card does not work with AITs under OS X. When writing 512 KB blocks to the AIT, Retrospect hangs. I reported that to Dantz and Orange Micro back in the 5.0 release timeframe but Orange Micro has not released a later version of firmware than the one I'm using. But I'll give it a try as soon as I can get a convenient time to shutdown the server. Quote: Adaptec SCSI cards are just plain no good under OSX in my experience. I don't think Apple supports the 2930 in OSX and Dantz doesn't support them either. I'm pretty sure that this card was supported when I started using it with 5.0. Perhaps the ongoing changes that Apple is making to X is causing more stuff to break. Quote: Does Orange micro have an updated driver availible for OSX 10.3 I'm using the latest version they have. Quote: One explaination for why this was not a problem in Retrosepct 5.0 is that Retrospect 5.0 did not include the updated SCSI support for G5s and Panther. Well, I was hoping that compatibility would get better over time rather than worse. SCSI cards are very expensive so I'm not anxious to change out something that used to work and is broken with a new release of software. I'll let you know what I find with the Orange Micro card. As I'm writing this the Backup Server is trying to run an AIT script and is hung checking media, although the AIT is not being accessed and I ejected the DVD-RAM media and told Retrospect to ignore the DVD-RAM device. It really appears as if the AIT and/or its SCSI card are the source of the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheppard Posted April 16, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 16, 2004 Switching the AIT to the Orange Micro card does keep it from hanging when scanning media, however it still has the problem in that in cannot write 512 KB blocks without hanging Retrospect. No surprise there since it's been that way since X 10.2 and R 5.0 and Orange Micro has not released a new driver. Also, there is no change to removable media backups as they hang searching the drives for media as before. Since I cannot afford to swap out two SCSI cards that work fine with OS 9 and OS 10.2 with R 5.0, I'm going to have to roll back to X 10.2 and R 5.0. Can I request a refund from customer service for 6.0 since it's essentially useless to me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted April 19, 2004 Report Share Posted April 19, 2004 Hi If you bought Retrospect directly from Dantz and you purchased the upgrade within 30 days you can return it for a full refund. Assuming the Orange Micro card works with the AIT, why not just get a different adapter for the DVD-RAM? Expensive I know but it is an alternative. Thanks Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheppard Posted April 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 19, 2004 Quote: If you bought Retrospect directly from Dantz and you purchased the upgrade within 30 days you can return it for a full refund. Thanks. I'll have to do that since I just can't get 6.0 to work. I did notice that the Backup Server doesn't work but I can do immediate backups so it was something to do with how the Backup Server communicates with the AIT. Quote: Assuming the Orange Micro card works with the AIT, why not just get a different adapter for the DVD-RAM? It works in that it doesn't hang but it hangs when writing 512 KB blocks of data, which is all the time, so the Orange Micro card is not usable with the AIT either. You mentioned earlier in the thread that you didn't think X supported the Adaptec 2930 card yet I found a file that seems to indicate that it is supported: /System/Library/Extensions/Adaptec290X-2930.kext Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sheppard Posted April 19, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 19, 2004 Quote: It works in that it doesn't hang but it hangs when writing 512 KB blocks of data... Sorry, I meant to say it doesn't hang when the Backup Server scans for the next medium but hangs when writing large blocks of data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted April 21, 2004 Report Share Posted April 21, 2004 Hi There are legacy kernel extensions present but Dantz does not support them. We would love to but Adaptec cards just don't work well in OSX - particularly Panther. Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.