Mac clients turn themselves off after reboot

[blm14]

Some of the Mac clients I back up seem to turn themselves off after the mac is rebooted. Any idea how to prevent this?

[Mayoff]

This is a bug which will be fixed in the next client update. A public beta will be available soon.

[blm14]

Is there any ETA on that? I back up over 60 Macs and I can't ask all my users to remember to check the retrospect client every time they reboot.

[rhwalker]

This may not be a bug. Previous people who have reported this have moved the Mac Retrospect client from its default location in /Applications, or else have renamed the client; we've never seen this on our network of Macs. Could you please investigate and report:

 

(1) what is the version of the Mac client? current version is 6.1.130, available here:

http://www.emcinsignia.com/supportupdates/updates/#UPDATETYPE8

 

(2) In Terminal, on one of the affected Macs, provide the output of the following "ls" command:

ls -ald /Applications/Ret*

 

The result should be:

Code:

---

rhwimac:~ rhwalker$ ls -ald /Applications/Ret*

drwxrwxr-x 3 root wheel 102 Jul 3 2005 /Applications/Retrospect Client.app

rhwimac:~ rhwalker$

---

 

(3) in Terminal, on one of the affected Macs to make sure that the client is set up to autolaunch, provide the output of the following command:

cat /Library/StartupItems/Retro*/*

 

The result should be:

Code:

---

rhwimac:~ rhwalker$ cat /Library/StartupItems/Retro*/*

#!/bin/sh

 

##

# Start Retroclient (pitond) daemon

#

# please make sure this is saved with unix line endings

##

 

. /etc/rc.common

 

if [ -f "/Library/Preferences/retroclient.state" ] && [ -d "/Applications/Retrospect Client.app" ]; then

ConsoleMessage "Starting Retrospect Client"

/Applications/Retrospect\ Client.app/Contents/Resources/pitond &

fi

{

Description = "RetroClient daemon";

Provides = ("Network Backup");

OrderPreference = "Late";

Messages =

{

start = "Starting RetroClient";

stop = "Stopping RetroClient";

};

}

rhwimac:~ rhwalker$

---

 

Report back your results.

 

Russ

[blm14]

Ok so one one of the macs, the first part worked, that is the client had the correct filename in the correct path.

 

BUT! The entire /Library/StartupItems/RetroClient was missing. I re-installed the client and the scripts appeared exactly as above. But here's my problem: the user didn't delete that directory, so I'm curious 1) Why it disappeared and 2) How to prevent this from occurring again.

 

I checked another one of the clients and that one was exactly set up as you described above. Stranger and stranger.

[rhwalker]

Quote:

---

Ok so one one of the macs, the first part worked

 

---

a little unclear what you mean here because no report was provided of the output of the "ls" and "cat" commands.

 

You may want to check the integrity of your filesystems by booting from the install DVD and running Disk Utility. We've never seen this problem in the years we have been backing up our networked Macs.

 

Something caused /Library/StartupItems/RetroClient to be missing on your system. Again, we've never seen it here.

 

Also, if you launch the Retrospect client on the Mac, is it reported as "on"?

 

Is there more than one instance of the Retrospect client installed? Report the results of the following in Terminal on one of the affected Macs (it will take a while because it has to recurse the entire filesystem on your boot volume):

Code:

---

sudo find / | fgrep pitond

---

Here's what you should see (only a single instance of pitond):

Code:

---

rhwimac:~ rhwalker$ sudo find / | fgrep pitond

Password:

/Applications/Retrospect Client.app/Contents/Resources/pitond

rhwimac:~ rhwalker$

---

That's a "pipe" symbol before the fgrep; easiest way is to copy/paste the command into Terminal.

 

Also, on the issue of disappearing files, does the "retroclient.state" file exist? That's a pre-requisite for the client starting up (see the StartupItems script). Try the following command in Terminal on one of the affected Macs:

Code:

---

ls -al /Library/Preferences/retroclient.state

---

Here's what you should see:

Code:

---

rhwimac:~ rhwalker$ ls -al /Library/Preferences/retroclient.state

-rw-r--r-- 1 root admin 2136 Feb 8 14:11 /Library/Preferences/retroclient.state

rhwimac:~ rhwalker$

---

 

Russ