bchern Posted December 10, 2003 Report Share Posted December 10, 2003 Moving to Panther broke Retrospect as far as communicating with my AIT 1+ tape drive. (ultra160 LVD Sony mechanism in a La Cie case) under two different SCSI cards now. (G4 533 "Digital audio") I had an Adaptec 29160 apparently working fine under Jaguar. It looked like it was working just as well under Panther, until it got to the verification stage, and there it became obvious that the backup had failed early on and just didn't realize it. (endless "bad backup header at..." listings.) So, I bought an ATTO UL3D/apple OEM card. It started making verifiable backups, but every time the tape drive is being accessed the rest of the computer is hung. I mean, cursor won't move, nothing. Later (sometimes MUCH later) it will come back to life. On a long backup, that can be 12 hours of the system looking like it is hung. I don't think that will work. So, I have both the likely candidates for cards on hand, and they both appear to be useless at this point. anyone? anything? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bchern Posted December 16, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 16, 2003 I'm going to reply to my post just to make it look active, in hopes someone will read it who didn't the first time. I'd really like to hear from anyone with anything to say about AIT SCSI drives under Panther, positive or negative. I need to send that OEM UL3D back right away, and I 'd like to have any idea if I have misunderstood the problem. I still need some indication of whether it makes any sense to be looking for a non-OEM UL3D, or whether that would be another dead-end. Or, if I'm off-base about my 29160 being useless now. What the heck am I going to do to keep my back-up working, I don't have a clue. All I can do now is boot back into Jaguar, I'm right back where I was when I had to boot into OS9 to backup when I wanted to be running under X. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
natew Posted December 16, 2003 Report Share Posted December 16, 2003 Hi This is probably not what you want to hear but here is the offical word on a similar issue: XServe/Mac OS X Server Dantz, along with several other software and hardware companies, have been actively investigating Mac OS X Server backup problems reported by customers in the field. The core issue reported is that after a certain period of backup to SCSI-attached tape, the server (most often an Xserve) becomes unresponsive or is restarted by the watchdog utility. Dantz and the other companies involved are working together to find the root cause of--and a solution to--this problem. To be notified when additional information is available, Dantz recommends that affected customers sign up for the Dantz Xserve mailing list. Adaptec SCSI Adapter Support Currently Dantz does not support any Adaptec SCSI adapter for use in the Power Macintosh G5 or any Macintosh running Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. No changes to Retrospect will be necessary to support these adapters on the Power Mac G5 or Mac OS X 10.3 Panther when Adaptec provides full compatibility. Really high CPU useage is another symptom of the problem listed above. I suspect that may be what it happening in your case Nate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jclark Posted December 17, 2003 Report Share Posted December 17, 2003 Ya, I got an AIT autoloader, ATTO UL3D card, 10.3.1 on a dual 800 G4 using Retrospect 5.1. The few problems are mostly what's being discussed on these forums. My biggest gripe/prob: Slow, slow, s l o w , effectively stopped backups on the second backup in a row ( reboot between backups to ( temp ) fix ). <sigh> jeff clark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thecomputerguy Posted December 17, 2003 Report Share Posted December 17, 2003 I know this doesn't answer the question, but I wanted to offer some friendly advise. I saw this problem coming when I ordered a new G5 to be my backup server. My previous backup machine was a G3-350 with a factory-installed SCSI card. Adaptec made I believe. Had that system for years, AIT-1 tape drive running Retrospect 4 and then on to Retrospect 5 for OS X compatibility. Version 4 I could always rely upon. Rock solid. Version 5 on the other hand, would crash with -822 errors all the time. When time came to upgrade the computer, I did my homework. I read where the Adaptec cards wouldn't work in the G5 and I never did like the way the SCSI card would bog the G3 down Anyways, with such slim pickings for SCSI cards, I decided to throw in the towel and go with a new Firewire AIT drive. I've been pleased with its performance as it never hangs the system like the SCSI drive did. It was costly to go this route, but I'm glad I did. As far as I am concerned, SCSI is dead on the Macintosh. So when you get tired of trying to master the old 'SCSI Voodoo', give FireWire a try. It works, and it works well. Good luck guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bchern Posted December 19, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Quote: jclark said: Slow, slow, s l o w , effectively stopped backups on the second backup in a row ( reboot between backups to ( temp ) fix ). jeff clark is it just the backup that's slow, or are you seeing total system freezes like I am? Is yours an OEM or a retail UL3D? Has the firmware been updated or the parameters tweaked in any way? I tried a new trial after a reboot, and it seemed to be working fine for awhile. then in the middle of the second volumes verify it started haning, freeing up every so often (every hour for a few minutes?) just like before, then totally black overnight. yet, even though the computer appears to be hung, the backup eventually finishes succesfully. I guess I have to return the card, anyway. I'm out of experimenting time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bchern Posted December 19, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Oh, yeah, meanwhile Adaptec says that with minimal testing they think their drivers work fine with Panter. As far as they know. Nope, don't know nothin over here... and Dantz says it's all up to Adaptec. And, I don't think Apple says anything, even about those ATTO cards that they commisioned and sold. hmmm, firewire. well, I guess that depends on whether any particular hardware goes along with what the software wants to do, as well. It was fleeing from an unworkable firewire setup that led me down this latest path. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bchern Posted December 19, 2003 Author Report Share Posted December 19, 2003 Well, this just in. Right after I shipped my ATTO card back for RMA, ATTO posted a new driver for Panther support. Of course, it still says it needs the flash file to complete, so maybe the OEM card still doesn't work. In any case, I wasted a lot of time and shipping charges, and have a 29160 that is forcing me to backup under Jaguar. By the way, BRU, a new competing backup app that claims great OS X support, lists 29160 as one of the cards that DOES work well under Panther. If I were not currently poor, I would go for their crossgrade bargain. But, I will try the demo anyway... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jclark Posted January 1, 2004 Report Share Posted January 1, 2004 Well, I just got the system back to working - installed ATTO new driver ( 3.0 ) and had curent flash ( 1.6.6u ) - never really got system to work properly ( well, in booted and saw hard drives ), but it never backed up. Reverted to old driver ( 2.1 if memory serves ), and all is well ( !! ) again - backs up fine *once*, then requires reboot to do a second backup. All is as it was... jeff except for the 3 days futzing w/it... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ccaviness Posted January 13, 2004 Report Share Posted January 13, 2004 I have an ATTO ExpressPro UL3D, and installed the 3.0.0 extension for 10.3.x. When I try to update the flash on the device, though, the downloaded file that is labelled 1.6.6u announces itself as 1.6.6f to the ExpressPCI config utility. Were you able to get 1.6.6u installed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jel Posted January 19, 2004 Report Share Posted January 19, 2004 I have a Sony AIT3 SCSI drive working with an Adaptec 29160 (running Firmware 1.2 which I flashed under MacOS 9), I also have driver 1.2 for Mac OS X (OS X only has driver 1.1 builtin). This is all on a Dual Processor PowerMac G4 867MHz running Mac OS X 10.3.1. As far as Retrospect works under ANY version of Mac OS it is running fine. What I do find is that the performance of Retrospect when backing up a volume with greater than 150,000 files on it (i.e. most servers) is intolerably slow (this was also the case under Mac OS 9). The more files on a volume the progressively worse it gets. As fellow Retrospect users will know Retrospect has three phases during a backup. 1. Scan 2. Backup 3. Update catalog It is phases 1 and 3 that are s_l_o_w (and these phases are not constrained by SCSI or Network speed). During phases 1 and 3 processor usage by Retrospect consistently runs at 100% (of a single processor) and can occasionally exceed 100% (indicates some usage of 2 processors). This is with the maximum 2GB of RAM, plenty of disk space and no fragmentation (fresh install). Backing up should NOT be such a processor intensive process. How the hell do Dantz expect to be able to backup an XServe RAID (of multiple terabytes) if they can't even backup one average server at a reasonable speed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted January 19, 2004 Report Share Posted January 19, 2004 Our testing of Adaptec cards on Panther shows that they do not work correctly with tape devices and are not supported by Dantz under Panther. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jel Posted January 21, 2004 Report Share Posted January 21, 2004 > Our testing of Adaptec cards on Panther shows that they do not work correctly with tape devices > and are not supported by Dantz under Panther. You missed the point of my message. 1. It is working for ME under Mac OS X 10.3.1 (at least as well as Mac OS 9.2.2 or Mac OS X 10.2.x) 2. The speed problem also occured under Mac OS 9. The speed problem is an inherent problem due to the design of Retrospect (it also applies to Retrospect running on Windows according to another discussion). It is to do with building snapshots, it is just too damned slow when dealing with large numbers of files. Apart from the fact that the Scanning and Cataloging phases take far, far too long, the fact that Retrospect also makes hardly any use of a second processor indicates it has not been designed to use threads and thereby benefit from a second processor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted January 21, 2004 Report Share Posted January 21, 2004 You say: Our testing of Adaptec cards on Panther shows that they do not work correctly with tape devices and are not supported by Dantz under Panther. Out of curiosity -- what does Dantz thinks not works under Panther? I have 4 machines using 29160 cards (with the 1.2 driver -- not part of Panther default install and, as such, requiring installation of the 1.2 driver) with APS DLT8000 drives. And I have another machine with an older 2930 card backing up to an older DLT drive as well. I'm having no backup-to-tape issues with them. I would agree with the posts above -- scanning and compressing the catalog files are the bottlenecks when backing up OSX clients. The actual *backup* of the clients goes at expected 200M/min (approx) over a switched 100Base-T network. Are the speeds of scanning OSX clients going to be increased with Retrospect 6? I would think that the compression of the catalog file is strictly CPU based, and, as such, there's not much you can do to improve that, can you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rickb Posted January 27, 2004 Report Share Posted January 27, 2004 I've been lurking on this thread for awhile and I guess its time for me to add my data point. I am having serious problems with Dantz 5.1 and SCSI cards. I am using Dantz Workgroup 5.1 on a G4/500 and Mac OS X 10.3.2 (7D24), an Adaptec 29160 with driver 1.3b1, and an Atto UL3S with the 1.6.6f flash and 3.0.2 driver. The backup devices are a Sony DDS4 tape drive and a HP DDS4 tape drive. I applied the SCSI update after updating the SCSI card drivers. Problem: If I connect the drives to the Atto card, Retrospect fails on any multi-tape session. While rewinding or seeking on a tape, Retrospect seems to go into neverneverland and the machine needs to be rebooted. A "force quit" at this point results in a kernel panic. If I connect the drives to the Adaptec card, only the drive with the lowest LUN is recognized by Retrospect although both drives are correctly recognized by Apple's System Profiler. The problems with the SCSI cards seems to be restricted to the tape drives. I have not had any problems with SCSI disks attached to the cards. Are other ATTO card users still reporting problems? Does anyone else have multiple tape drives attached to an Adaptec card? Are the problems with SCSI cards "fixed" with the new version? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bchern Posted January 29, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2004 Quote: Mayoff said: Our testing of Adaptec cards on Panther shows that they do not work correctly with tape devices and are not supported by Dantz under Panther. Has anyone mentioned this to Adaptec? They are under the impression there are no issues with their cards under 10.3. I mean, has anyone from DANTZ bothered to communicate with them? Or are all you companies only concerned with deflecting responsibility, and leave sorting it out to the users. Let's see, of which company should I stop being a customer? Oh, if only there were such a thing as competition under this system... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rickb Posted January 29, 2004 Report Share Posted January 29, 2004 bchern, FWIW, I reported my problems to both ATTO and Adaptec. Its a little soon but I have not yet had any response from either company. I spend more money on these tapes drives, cards and backup software than I did buying my Mac in the first place. I don't feel like I am getting much value for those dollars. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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