oslomike Posted April 9, 2020 Report Share Posted April 9, 2020 After unfailing service for about 8 years, suddenly, all my retro 8 scheduled scripts stopped running. They all look exactly the same and the schedules are all in tact. ANY idea as to what happened and if they are permanently broken? I could try to remake them, but maybe there's a simpler solution? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHertzberg Posted April 9, 2020 Report Share Posted April 9, 2020 oslomike, The Forums last heard from you in this 2019 "Retrospect 9 or higher for Macintosh" thread. Did you update your Retrospect Mac Console, but not the Engine, to Retrospect Mac 14.6.2 per this Knowledge Base article? If so, maybe there's a new bug—and maybe it's not cosmetic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oslomike Posted April 10, 2020 Author Report Share Posted April 10, 2020 Hi David, I didn't update. I'm still running Retrospect 8. It seems to have healed itself when it comes to the "deferred" issue; it still says deferred on all scripts, but they're actually running now. Go figure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHertzberg Posted April 10, 2020 Report Share Posted April 10, 2020 oslomike, In writing my preceding post in this thread, I misread this Knowledge Base article. It says "Customers can download the following DMG and use the 14.6.2 Mac console to connect to Retrospect for Mac v12.5, v13.5, and v14.6 [my emphasis]". So you couldn't have upgraded to the Retrospect Mac 14.6.2 Console while continuing to run the Retrospect Mac 8 Engine. Is there any reason—other than cost—why you are continuing to run Retrospect Mac 8? I've already left a phone message for the head of North American Sales, asking if Retrospect "Inc." could give you a cheap price for upgrading to version 12.5—which you could use with the Retrospect Mac 14.6.2 Console and solve the "deferred" issue. Your scripts are running now, even though your Console is saying "deferred", because that issue was indeed cosmetic as Retrospect Inc. said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oslomike Posted April 10, 2020 Author Report Share Posted April 10, 2020 Hi David, I think that I decided to stay where I was because it was working pretty flawlessly this whole time. And way back when, when this current setup came to be, it took a considerable effort to finally get it running stably. I think this was back when Retrospect was owned by a different company. Anyways, as I mentioned previously, my current Retrospect machine has been running for about 8 years or more. The Mac Pro is a 1,1 model and the OS is OSX Snow Leopard. Can this machine be upgraded to run the newer software? Probably not. Coincidently, I do have another Mac Pro that I just decommissioned that is a 5,1 (firmware updated 4,1 machine). I would just need to make sure my ATTO express SAS PCI card will work together with it. I wouldn't say no to a fix, or a workaround or a free something to get it running again. I appreciate your effort here, thanks! FWIW, I've been using Retrospect for over 20 years, and not all eras were equally happy; hence my anxiety for upgrading. I guess I'm due. 🙂 Having said that, I can't decommission the old machine completely because I sometimes I need to restore a project from Retrospect 6 from a DAT or Exabyte tape drive. Still works but the tapes are starting to get old which worries me. Thanks again! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidHertzberg Posted April 10, 2020 Report Share Posted April 10, 2020 oslomike, This Knowledge Base article says Retrospect Mac 16.1 is the last version for which the Engine will run on OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. I was using version 16.1 until about a week ago, when I upgraded to 16.6 because it had a number of fixes to the new Storage Groups feature—which I wanted to test but not use in production. I'm still using the 16.1 Client on my MacBook Pro, but I don't have "client volumes with names longer than 27 characters" or "files or folders with long non-English names". An old Wikipedia article section shows shifting ownership of Retrospect vs. continuity of the programming staff. I just phoned Retrospect Sales again, and spoke to Ian Denis because Werner Walter's phone seems perpetually busy (he's the head of North American Sales). Ian said they don't sell licenses for non-current versions, but he'll give you permission to buy a Desktop Edition upgrade license for US$139 with Annual Support and Maintenance; the ASM will enable Tech Support to give you a license for version 16 and enable you to download 16.1. Ian's e-mail is ian.denis@retrospect.com; the Retrospect phone number for U. S. Sales is + 1 (925) 476-1030 extension 2, and you can look up Ian's extension by name after dialing the phone number—all during 8 a.m.-6 p.m. California time. If you actually live in Oslo, Norway, European Sales may give you a better deal. A couple of years ago I did an experimental restore, on an older DAT tape drive, of some DAT tapes I backed up to at the end of 2003. Running Retrospect Mac 6.1 directly on my Digital Audio G4 under OS X 10.4, because Retrospect 16 eliminated support for the Legacy Client, I back up 3 drives on the G4 to a newer DAT drive and compare using DAT72 tapes I bought in 2015. Both DAT drives attach to my G4 via SCSI. You can buy DAT72 tapes for US$65 each. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oslomike Posted April 11, 2020 Author Report Share Posted April 11, 2020 Hello again David, Thanks for the legwork on my behalf! I do live in Oslo, Norway. I'll try to find a EU sales rep, and if not I'll probably end up looking up Ian. Strangely, I just checked past backups and a script ran two nights in a row now, completely unexpected. What's worse than it not working is that it sometimes works and I never know when. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nigel Smith Posted April 24, 2020 Report Share Posted April 24, 2020 On 4/10/2020 at 5:44 PM, oslomike said: The Mac Pro is a 1,1 model and the OS is OSX Snow Leopard. Can this machine be upgraded to run the newer software? Limited to 10.7.5, so still stuck at RS 16.1 as per the KB article David linked. On 4/10/2020 at 5:44 PM, oslomike said: Coincidently, I do have another Mac Pro that I just decommissioned that is a 5,1 (firmware updated 4,1 machine). I would just need to make sure my ATTO express SAS PCI card will work together with it. Should work OK, and that Mac could potentially run Catalina if it has a compatible graphics card (see here). But maybe it's time to revisit your whole system -- transfer those old RS6 backups from tape to disk (or more modern tape), indulge in a Mac Mini with current Retrospect, backing up to a NAS which is replicated to the cloud for off-site storage, etc. Things have come on a long way in the last 20 years, so it's worth taking a fresh look at how you might do things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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