Retro 6.1 cannot open/create startup file

[Bette]

I have had the following happen twice since I have started using a Exabyte VXA DC Firewire backup device:

 

Nightly backups work just fine until Thursday and then suddenly Retrospect cannot open/create startup file. It also cannot access the catalog for the backup in a folder inside the user Document folder saying the file/folder cannot be found. The dialog window titles are garbage characters and the so are the buttons. Guessing which button is which on the mystery windows, I can exit the application. I must reboot my Dual 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 at this stage. Then Retrospect has no problem again for several weeks.

 

The G5 is running 10.4.9 and has 1Gb DDR SDRAM; storage space is 160Gb of which 122 is available. This G5's has 3 primary duties one of which is to do backups. It also acts as a central post office for SnapMail and MYOB server. However, neither of these two applications are running when Retrospect is doing backups. And, nothing else on the system exhibits any strange behavior when Retrospect starts behaving this way.

 

The Retrospect version is 6.1.138; driver update version 6.1.13.101; Device Access version 1.0.107

 

I have run diagnostics on the system and drive and there are no issues. Repair Permissions routine is executed weekly and looking at the logs, I do not see any issues there.

 

Follow up on this issue - I searched the admin user logs on this system this morning and found the following two entries in the sh.crash.log:

 

**********

 

Host Name: PRcoFiles

Date/Time: 2007-11-22 22:30:12.804 -0800

OS Version: 10.4.9 (Build 8P135)

Report Version: 4

 

Command: sh

Path: /bin/sh

Parent: Retrospect [11571]

 

Version: ??? (???)

 

PID: 11573

Thread: Unknown

 

Link (dyld) error:

 

Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libncurses.5.4.dylib

Referenced from: /bin/sh

Reason: image not found

**********

 

Host Name: PRcoFiles

Date/Time: 2007-12-21 17:30:04.098 -0800

OS Version: 10.4.9 (Build 8P135)

Report Version: 4

 

Command: sh

Path: /bin/sh

Parent: Retrospect [5636]

 

Version: ??? (???)

 

PID: 5638

Thread: Unknown

 

Link (dyld) error:

 

Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libncurses.5.4.dylib

Referenced from: /bin/sh

Reason: image not found

******************

 

The entry dates are the exact dates of my failed backups. However, I have no idea what they mean. Does this provide any insight to my problem?