Jump to content

Retrospect 5.0 Server and OS X clients - freezing


Recommended Posts

Hi

 

 

 

Quick question - I'm using Retrospect 5.0 Server on an OS 9.1 machine with 3 VXA drives on it. It's backing up a mixture of Windows / OS 9 / OS X (10.1.5) clients - all of which have the latest client updates etc..

 

 

 

I have a scripted backup system that backs up various machines and our network

 

 

 

The problem I'm running into is that the while the server will back up all the Wintel and OS 9 clients, reliably, I can't reliably backup all the OS X clients. Sometimes I can get one or two done but it will always stall on one of them (but never the same one). By stall, I mean that the icon stops moving and my Mac seems frozen. Force quitting doesn't help and I have to reboot.

 

 

 

If I remove all the OS X clients, the back-up works fine.

 

 

 

This has only happened once I moved to OS X clients and upgraded to 5.0 so I could back up my OS X clients.

 

 

 

No problems before when I only had OS 9 and Wintel clients.

 

 

 

All the clients are accessed over the network i.e. I don't have them mounted as local drives.

 

 

 

Any ideas? - this is most frustrating esp. since I seem to be able to get some of the clients, some of the time, but not all of them all of the time, and it is limited to the OS X clients.. Could this problem be related to running Retrospect on an OS 9 machine vs OS X for backing up OS X clients?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you get errors in the log? Can you do an immediate backup? Is there an error on the screen during the backup?

 

 

 

What version of client is installed?

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi

 

 

 

Thanks for the quick response

 

 

 

I was running an immediate backup so that I could watch it (it's scripted to run at midnight)

 

 

 

No error on the screen - just a stuck icon and the clock was stopped on the Finder menu bar

 

 

 

Client - the latest OS X version that was released yesterday (this has been on-going ever since I installed the released OS X client about a year (?) or so ago. Never tried the beta client on any machines

 

 

 

Note - I did get one error on one OS X client that said - Error -108, not enough memory - it skipped that and then ran to my OS X Server box..

 

 

 

Now actually - this one is consistent. It scans the OS X server but when it starts to 'Copying HD ".. then it stalls.

 

 

 

Could this be an OS X Server client problem then?. (although I'm recall this stalling before on other OS X machines)

 

 

 

I'm running the most up to date version of OS X Server under 10.1.5

 

 

 

when I reboot, Retrospect comes up with the "Automatic execution failed" dialog...

 

 

 

Thanks

 

 

 

Chris

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is the behavior that you're describing from the server side? Or the client side?

 

 

 

How consistent is this?

 

 

 

What's running on the OS X machine at the time of the backup? Virus software?

 

 

 

Thanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi

 

 

 

Server side (OS 9.1. running Retrospect 5.0 Server) - client is fine... - I just checked after the last crash of the Retrospect server and the client has a message "In use by <>".. i.e. the client still thinks the back-up is running

 

 

 

Pretty consistent (i.e. consistent enough that I didn't enable OS X Client back up earlier - I had hoped that this new client would solve the problem)

 

 

 

Nothing, other than OS X Server was running. Antivirus wise, Norton System Tools is installed and up to date..

 

 

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are you able to back up small subvolumes? What kind of performance do you get for the copy speeds? What about the performance of the OS 9/Win clients?

 

 

 

What are you backing up to?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems to get through the scanning but stalls when it starts the copying part of the back-up. No progress on the progress bar, although that window does pop-up

 

 

 

Back-up of the other clients works well, albeit slowly. It's intermittant, sometimes I can get 50 MB / min, other times, 9 MB / min - depends on our network, I suspect.

 

 

 

Backing up to VXA tapes - which worked fine before, and do work fine if the OS X clients are removed from the back-up script.

 

 

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can't get it to work - small back-up set, nothing - tried a File Back-Up Set - while it does scan, when it gets to the "Preparing" dialog, it stalled completely and froze my OS 9 Retrospect server...

 

 

 

So summary

 

 

 

OS X Server, 10.1.5, latest client, back-up over TCP/IP to a OS 9 Retrospect 5 Server machine, running on either VXA or File Backup set...

 

 

 

Freezes Mac after completing the "Scan" portion of the backup..

 

 

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmmm

 

 

 

Minor modification - I did try a subvolume back-up and was able to get the Users folder - now I'm trying the Users + System Folder...

 

 

 

Seems to be working - so perhaps the problem is that it can't grab the "whole" drive when you spec it by simply clicking the machine's name?

 

 

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well - I still run into a problem w/ a scripted back-up.. I was only able to get that back-up to work once with the OS X client.

 

 

 

Maybe I have to run a file back-up set to my Server and then run the tape backup of the Retrospect server

 

 

 

I had the same problem w/ the OS X client apparently causing the OS 9.1 Retrospect server to freeze in Retrospect during back-up

 

 

 

Any other suggestions

 

 

 

Thanks

 

 

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In reply to:

I'm using Retrospect 5.0 Server on an OS 9.1 machine with 3 VXA drives on it.


 

- What kind of machine?

 

- What sort of VXA drives?

 

- What happens if you disconnect all external devices (such as the three VXA drives) and try a File Backup Set?

 

- What happens with just one VXA drive? Or a different one? Or just two?

 

 

 

Dave

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi

 

 

 

It's a 7300/200 w/ an XLR8 G3/400 in it - OS 9.1

 

 

 

2 VXA are LVD internals running off an Initio Miles2 w/ one LVD VXA on the external connection

 

 

 

This setup worked fine for many moons under 4.3 but I've had problems ever since I swapped up to 5.0 but then ONLY with OS X clients - none of the Wintel clients or OS 9.1 clients have balked.. Just the OS X ones.

 

 

 

I was able - once - to back up to a backup file set - part of an OS X machine. I've never been able to back up an entire OS X box over the network.. I do have a Firewire VXA drive that I can tote around to back up locally - but that would defeat the purpose...

 

 

 

Thanks

 

 

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Well - I was able to get it to work - I installed Retrospect Server 5.0 on an OS X box and it had no problem backing up all my OS X clients.... go figure...

 

 

 

So while I couldn't reliably backup OS X clients on a OS 9.1 Retrospect 5.0 server, I can do it without a problem on an OS X Retrospect 5.0 server...

 

 

 

I guess I'll have to buy a new OS X box now...

 

 

 

Chris

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I am having a similar problem, but the clients are running under OS 9.1 while backupserver fails.

 

 

 

The European Dantz support told me there is an issue with clients when running OS 9 and OS-X.

 

They said something like: ...If classic environment is startd under OS-X, the OS 9 System becomes corrupt.

 

 

 

Each time the Retrospect Server (5.0.205, under OS 9.1 on a B&W G3/350)

 

tries to backup the OS-X partition, the server crashes.

 

(I also had to increase the amount of memory for Retrospect Server first).

 

 

 

Since the permissons from OSX partition cannot be backuped when client runs under OS 9,

 

a backup of the OSX partition does not make any sence.

 

The only way not to backup it is to tell the server in the client configuratin dialog

 

only to backup selected volumes. It is not possible to handle this through a selector as Dantz told me

 

because the selectors are asked at a later point of time.

 

This is not a really good workaround since we have some external FireWire harddrives, rotating on clients desktops which should be backed up no matter on which desktop they are mounted...

 

 

 

Does somebody found a workaround for this in meantime?

 

 

 

Slawomir

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Chris,

 

 

 

Do you have have VM turned on, on the OS9 machine. Turning it off seems to have fixed this problem for me (Also running with 50mb RAM). I say 'seems' as I haven't had enough time to get to all the OSX machines, but it is doing now what it was not before!

 

 

 

I guess it's maybe something to do with the sheer number of files under OSX, that the problem only shows up with OSX clients.

 

 

 

Graham.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...