error 102 (trouble communicating)

[kvrousseau]

I'm running Retrospect 6.1.138, RDU 6.1.14.101 on a MacPro under 10.5.3 (the 4-processor 2.66 version of the MacPro).

 

I'm backing up 4 client Macs to the MacPro. I back up to DVDs (DVD+R) and have been only getting, on average, 1-2GB per DVD before getting the error 102 message. I upgraded to Leopard about the same time I installed RDU 6.1.14.101, and am not sure which of those (or something else!) it might be. But the problem did not occur before then--I would get 10-20 good DVDs burned before I would have any problem or error.

 

I have 2 DVD burners in this Mac: an OptiArc AD-7170A, and a Pioneer DVR-111D. The problem occurs with either/both burners.

 

Any ideas on what the problem might be?

 

Thanks,

 

Ken

[Mayoff]

What is the driver listed under Configure>Devices>Device Status in Retrospect for each drive.

[CallMeDave]

I upgraded to Leopard about the same time I installed RDU 6.1.14.101, and am not sure which of those (or something else!) it might be

 

The easiest test you could do is try with the version of the RDU you were using before you installed 6.1.14.101. If it works, use it.

[kvrousseau]

Robin:

 

Between last night and now, I upgraded to Retrospect 6.1.230, with RDU 6.1.15.100, and the problem continues. When I check the driver as you suggested, it says

 

Optiarc DVD DL (5.13)

Pioneer DVD DL (5.13)

 

FWIW, the Optiarc firmware version is listed as 1.N8, and the Pioneer is AB09.

 

Ken

[kvrousseau]

CallMeDave:

 

Yeah, I had that thought about 30 seconds after posting. :-) Thanks for the suggestion--after checking the website again and realizing there was a newer version, I decided to try that instead. As I mentioned in the response to Robin, the problem continues. If I can't solve it with the newer version, I may try rolling back to 6.1.138 and a previous version of the RDU to see if it's that or Leopard. Not sure how I would go about going backwards in Retrospect versions, however.

 

Have you heard of any similar issues? I checked the forum postings, and didn't see anything pointing at Leopard or 6.1.14.101...

 

Thanks,

 

Ken

[Chief Technician]

Hello,

 

I checked the log file this morning and found my first error 102 occurrence since updating to v6.1.230 with its included RDU. I have since regressed to the previous RDU I was using, v6.1.13.101. The server is a Mac Pro, 2 2.66GHz Dual-Core, with two (2) Pioneer DVR-112D drives, both with firmware version AC08, using OS X Server v10.5.2.

 

[CallMeDave]

I have since regressed to the previous RDU I was using, v6.1.13.101

 

And?

[kvrousseau]

CallMeDave:

 

I went back in the log file, and scanned it, and it turns out that I did have the "error 102" message with 6.1.138 and RDU 6.1.13.101, under Leopard.

 

So, it appears that the triggering event for my system was the change from 10.4.11 to 10.5.2 (since upgraded to 10.5.3).

 

Ken

[Chief Technician]

And?

And it happened again. Any chance that this version of Retrospect is the cause of the problem, and not the RDU file? I did NOT, I'll type that again, did NOT change the OS or install any security updates.

 

Thanks for reading!

Edited July 10, 2008 by Guest

[kvrousseau]

Robin:

 

A followup piece of info: I've continued getting the problem, but it turns out to appear more under heavy compute load. For example, when Retrospect is the only program open on the machine, it does not occur. It occurs randomly when I'm using maybe 1 of the cores, and when I'm doing an encode that shows maybe 325% CPU on my 4-core machine, then the error occurs almost immediately upon inserting a fresh DVD.

 

Does that help at all?

 

Thanks,

 

Ken

[CallMeDave]

...when I'm doing an encode that shows maybe 325% CPU on my 4-core machine, ... the error occurs almost immediately upon inserting a fresh DVD.

 

Sounds like normal behavior to me. It's a Macintosh, not a magic box.

 

Dave

[kvrousseau]

Dave:

 

The point I was trying to make is that there may be some interaction between the software and the hardware, or possibly OS, that is exacerbated by heavy loading. If the problem occurs 100% of the time when 80% of the compute cycles are spoken for, maybe it only occurs 10% of the time when, say, 20% of the box's compute cycles are in use. Or maybe it doesn't occur at all below some threshold loading. My goal was to give some additional data that might benefit anyone that was making a serious effort to debug the problem.

 

Second, I get that it's not a magic box--possibly my expectations are a little higher than yours in that I would hope that there is not an expectation, for example, of synchronous communication between the software and the backup hardware. That would imply to me some unrealistic assumptions on the part of the software designer, or possibly an easily-fixed bug.

 

Last, that was kind of a cheap shot. I've probably read a couple hundred of your posts on this forum and generally benefited and found you a voice of reason--your comment seems a little uncharacteristic.

 

Ken

[CallMeDave]

I've probably read a couple hundred of your posts on this forum and generally benefited and found you a voice of reason

 

Me? And here I always thought that Russ was the good cop...

 

I remember when I bought my first OS X based iMac (first generation G5, the one with the bulging capacitors). I was attempting to burn a DVD-R using Disk Burner, all the while browsing with Safari and fetching mail with Eudora and generally pushing the 1GB based machine as hard as would at any time.

 

My burns continued to fail.

 

I called AppleCare (I think it was my first time ever), and the nice operator suggested I try my burn without running any other applications at the same time. I remember being surprised, and asking "but it's OS X!"

 

She was right, of course. Allowing the burning software full use of the CPU and available RAM gave me consistent burns (at a pitiful 2x). My expectations of symmetrical multi-processing, protected memory goodness of the new Modern Mac OS (and the new modern G5) got tempered with reality.

 

On my current 2 GB iMac Core Duo, I find that burning a DVD-R causes the responsiveness of other programs to suffer, and I generally don't burn while I'm also trying to do any productive work. I'm not sure what you mean by "doing an encode," but it's probably resource intensive, and it sounds unrealistic to expect your backup software to be burning disks (using inexpensive OEM disk burner hardware) at the same time.