Another Member of a Backup Setup showing as Missing - but isn't!

[bjohns]

I am running Retrospect 6.1.126 on an Apple Mac Xserve with Mac OS X 10.3.9. This version of Retrospect was upgraded from Version 5. I have several backup sets created in ver 5 of archived work and have had a problem where a member is showing as "Missing" even though I have the tape.

 

In ver 5 this wasn't a problem as it was possible to just click on "Set Found" and everything was OK again. In ver 6 it is a problem as the "Set Found" option is greyed out and it says that the member is pre-6 and read only.

 

I phoned the support and was told that the only way to fix this was to close Retropect 6, open Retrospect 5, rebuild the catalogue, close Retrospect 5 and open Retrospect 6. This worked but took 3 days to do as the backup set consisted of 8 x 260gb AIT tapes. The problem has just occured on a member of a different backup set this time the set consists of 14 x 260gb tapes and I desperately need a way of just saying that the one tape isn't missing. The tape wasn't showing as missing before, so if the set is read only how can it be changed to missing, and as it can be changed to missing by Retrospect why can't I just set it to be found?

[CallMeDave]

- Do you have backups of the catalog files? Given the critical nature of such files, it's a pretty good idea to have copies (perhaps burned to CD) in case anything goes wrong. If you need to rebuild, you can start with a backup copy, even if it's somewhat out of data, and the rebuild will go that much faster.

 

- It sounds as if (but confirmation would be good) the Backup Set had been opened/used in 6.x successfully for some amount of time? Or, was this the first time you opened the 5.x Backup Set in 6.x?

[bjohns]

No, I don't have any backups of the catalogue, which is probably not good practice of me. Saying that, the catalogue is not corrupt it's just showing a tape is missing when it isn't.

 

I've been using the backup set in ver 6 for some time without any problem. What happens though, and it happened in 5 as well, is that an operator will initiate a restore from the archive and then cancel it it for whatever reason, the tape that retrospect was requesting is then marked as missing. This wasn't a problem in ver 5 as you could just click on "Set Found", but in ver 6 it is greyed out as it's a pre-6 read only catalogue. What is frustrating is that if Retrospect can change a read only catalogue to be missing, why can't I just change it back to be found.

[bjohns]

I've still not had any joy sorting out this problem. It really isn't a possibility for me to spend 7 days recataloging a backup set because Retrospect has changed it to be missing and won't let me change it back. I use Retropect every day for backing up, if it is recataloging for 7 days I won't be able to do daily backups, also operators use the machine daily for retrieving archived work.

 

Is there away to get in to the backup set file and change it by reading the code? Could a programmer do this? Shouldn't someone at Dantz be able to do such a thing?

 

Please help.

[smartin]

 

bjohns: Welcome to my current world of Retrospect. I'm having a crashing situation causing me to do frequent recatalogues. If I understand your question correctly, you're saying you've phoned Dantz, they've told you 'the only way to fix this was to close Retropect 6, open Retrospect 5, rebuild the catalogue, close Retrospect 5 and open Retrospect 6.' and now you're asking us for an alternate solution? Sorry, but I certanly don't have any. I guess I'd start fresh backupsets and be done with it.

-s