tjspeace06 Posted June 15, 2006 Report Share Posted June 15, 2006 Just wondering if anyone knows why or how to fix a problem with Retrospect Client (6.1.130) ALWAYS being turned OFF after every restart? This is on six different iMac G5/1.9's running OS 10.4.6. 1GB of RAM in each machine. I did some digging on the forums and in the Knowledgebase and found that there were permission changes in Tiger and one of the recommendations was to do a client update from within the Retrospect Server. I tried that and as soon as I applied the update, the clients turned OFF (error -1028 client not visible on the network). A restart did nothing changed on the clients (still OFF). I noticed in a post on the forum that one person said the only OS X client compatible with Tiger is 6.0.212 - is this the case and any of the 6.1 versions are not compatible with Tiger? Kind of confused and any help that can be provided would be wonderful! :-) Thank you, Troy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted June 15, 2006 Report Share Posted June 15, 2006 A couple of thoughts for you to investigate: In terminal on the bad clients, if you do a "ps ax", do you see the client process running: /Applications/Retrospect Client.app/Contents/Resources/pitond If not, we can investigate why it's not starting. Have you checked this from KB 5643: Quote: go to the System Preferences (from the Apple Menu) and click Network. Change the pull-down menu to Show Active Network Ports. Make sure that the port that you wish to use with Retrospect is listed first in this window. If not, you may change the order by dragging the desired item to the top of the list. This may be needed if you have two network cards. This, if wrong, would have the client looking on the wrong interface for communication. Is it possible that those machines have the firewall turned on and are blocking communication with the client on Retrospect's ports? (Retrospect uses port 497). Does your network have VLANs that might be filtering things? Are these clients on the same subnet/netmask as the Retrospect server? If you think they are, have you checked the network addresses and netmask? Any routers or firewalls between these machines and the Retrospect server? Just a few things for you to check. Report your results. Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted June 15, 2006 Report Share Posted June 15, 2006 Quote: Just wondering if anyone knows why or how to fix a problem with Retrospect Client (6.1.130) ALWAYS being turned OFF after every restart? Have you moved the Retrospect Client application package from its default install location? The client process is started at system start time from a simple shell script in /Library/StartupItems/RetroClient/ That script has a path to the pitond binary, which lives inside the Client package. If you move the package, you've invalidated the startup script. Either move the software back, or edit the script. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted June 15, 2006 Report Share Posted June 15, 2006 Quote: Have you moved the Retrospect Client application package from its default install location? Dave, my hat will be off to you if this is the cause, but I didn't suggest this and was suggesting more esoteric possibilities because of this remark in the original post: Quote: I did some digging on the forums and in the Knowledgebase and found that there were permission changes in Tiger and one of the recommendations was to do a client update from within the Retrospect Server. I tried that and as soon as I applied the update, the clients turned OFF Seems that, if the client update/install was done from within Retrospect Server, the client should be in the right place. I still think that the most valuable piece of information is to verify whether pitond is running by using ps. There's got to be some common cause for the problems on these 6 machines, and leads me to wonder whether there's a VLAN or firewall in the middle, or if they are on some odd subnet. Regarding your (correct) suggestion to: Quote: Either move the software back, or edit the script. I'd suggest, if this is the problem, that the better of these two choices would be to put the client's package in the right spot (/Applications) so that we don't get off on a tangent about Unix line breaks, use of pico, etc., to solve a different issue. Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted June 15, 2006 Report Share Posted June 15, 2006 > if the client update/install was done from within Retrospect Server, the client should be in the right place Sorry Russ, I can't go with you on this one. If the Retrospect Client application package was moved, and the user started pitond manually (via the "on" radio button, for example), Retrospect would be quite happy to push an RDU across the network to it. While failures on multiple machines might indeed point to a single fault elsewhere in the chain, it's also entirely possible that there is some standard machine configuration that has the file locations being changed post-install. We know that pitod can run, as the user was able to connect and push the RDU. So the fact that the machines communicate successfully when pitond is started manually, but pitond fails to load when the machine reboots, suggests (to me) a configuration issue with the software itself. Now we just wait and see! Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted June 15, 2006 Report Share Posted June 15, 2006 Without trying to be critical of the OP, I agree with you about the possibilities, but the hoops that one would have to go through to set up such a scenario (manual pitond start, etc.) seem outside what the OP would have done. But I am often wrong... Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjspeace06 Posted June 16, 2006 Author Report Share Posted June 16, 2006 Hi Guys, Thank you very much for your help. I will reply to your questions and suggestions: "ps ax" on one of the bad clients: 199 ?? S 0:01.93 /Applications/Retrospect Client.app/Contents/MacOS/Retrospect Client -psn_0_2228225 I booted the client machine, opened Retro Client and it was Off. Ran Terminal and received the above line. On the same machine: Checked System Prefs (Network). Airport was off, unchecked and second choice, Firewire was off and unchecked - last choice, Built-in Ethernet was top choice and active. Next - Firewall: Off but - no entry was made for Retrospect. Added Retrospect to firewall entries (port 497). Saved changes. Turned Retro client On and rebooted. No change. Client was Off on reboot. Client package has not been moved from the default install location. I did do an update within the Retrospect Server to this client. That did not seem to make a difference. Clients are all on the same subnet & netmask as the Server. Clients are all set to DHCP. Server is static IP address (192.168.1.107). One NAT router providing Internet access - all machines are on a switch behind this router. Retrospect was working before we upgraded to Tiger. Anything else you might be able to suggest that I can try? Thank you again for all of your help. Troy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted June 16, 2006 Report Share Posted June 16, 2006 More questions: - When the radio button is set to "off," what is the text displayed in the Status field of the client? - When you click the "on" radio button, what is the text displayed in the Status field of the client? - Is "/Library/StartupItems/RetroClient/RetroClient" there? Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted June 16, 2006 Report Share Posted June 16, 2006 And you don't see pitond running, correct? Code: rhwimac:~ rhwalker$ ps ax | grep Retrospect 189 ?? S 53:24.61 /Applications/Retrospect Client.app/Contents/Resources/pitond 3881 p1 R+ 0:00.01 grep Retrospect rhwimac:~ rhwalker$ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjspeace06 Posted June 16, 2006 Author Report Share Posted June 16, 2006 Ok. Here are two screen shots of what Retrospect Client looks like while OFF: http://falcon.nocdirect.com/~jpeacelu/troy/retro_off.png and while ON: http://falcon.nocdirect.com/~jpeacelu/troy/retro_on.png Here is the text from Terminal for "ps ax": Last login: Fri Jun 16 14:40:12 on console Welcome to Darwin! janet-imac-g5:~ troy$ ps ax | grep Retrospect 199 p1 S+ 0:00.01 grep Retrospect janet-imac-g5:~ troy$ Anything else that I might check? Thank you, Troy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted June 16, 2006 Report Share Posted June 16, 2006 Yes, the most critical thing, namely, the answer to Dave's question: Quote: - Is "/Library/StartupItems/RetroClient/RetroClient" there? I hope that the answer to this question will solve the mystery. Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjspeace06 Posted June 20, 2006 Author Report Share Posted June 20, 2006 Just checked the path and /Library/StartupItems/RetroClient/RetroClient is there. There is also an item called StartupParameters.plist in the RetroClient directory. Anything else I could check? Is this helping in making a diagnostic of the problem? Thank you, Troy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted June 20, 2006 Report Share Posted June 20, 2006 Quote: Just checked the path and /Library/StartupItems/RetroClient/RetroClient is there The next step would be to confirm that the content (which is mostly just the full path to the pitond process) is correct. But, for purposes of internet support, I would suggest the following test on one of your affected machines: - Using the Retrospect Client installer, _uninstall_ the client software - Restart (not really required, but included in the test for thoroughness) - Using the Retrospect Client installer, _install_ the client software - Restart (possibly really required for install, certainly required for this test) - Immediately open /Applications/Retrospect Client and note the status of the radio button _AND_ the text in the Status field If pitond is not running as expected, I'd suggest looking in /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/ and check if there is any file named pitond in that folder. And/or poke around in the console log and see if there's any report of a pitond crash. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tjspeace06 Posted June 21, 2006 Author Report Share Posted June 21, 2006 Ok. Using the Retro Client installer, I removed Retro Client from the "test" bad machine that I have been using for this discussion. Restart. Install the Retro Client. Restart. Open Retro Client. It was ON! :-) It said ready for first access or something like that. I went back to the Retro Server and connected to the Client. I had to fix some parts of the script, but once that was done, I was able to back up the Client. I did a restart on the Client again and Retro Client was ON after the restart! I take it that something in the Tiger upgrade must have hosed something in the Retro Client and just reinstalling from the Server was not fixing it. The "test" bad Mac is working fine. I will try the same thing on a second iMac and see how that works. Thank you all very much for your help. Troy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.