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Snow Leopard Support


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We will have an official statement out in the next day or so.

 

Unfortunately the OS has changed a lot and the seeds from Apple kept changing a bunch along the way. Then Apple changed the release date on us and all other developers

 

We had a release scheduled for around the same time as the original estimated Snow Leopard release date. This means we do not have a snow leopard compatible version for the launch this Friday. We are doing our best to shorten the prior release schedule so customers can use it quicker.

 

I do not know the specifics on the compatibility issues, but I do remember a problem with the Retrospect installer changing some snow leopard permissions. I don't know if this still happens.

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Talking with engineering one major issue exists for backup programs and Snow Leopard.

 

The Operating System files are in a compressed state. The backup of those files copies them uncompresses. Older versions of Retrospect would then restore them in an uncompressed state and no known way exists to re-compress those files.

 

A planned update to Retrospect 8 will address this problem and others. We hope to have the Retrospect 8 update available in a 30 day timeframe.

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So, after reading the KB article -- -- is there any *advantage* to updating the *engine* computer to 10.6 at this time?

 

Especially if I'm only backing up "User" files on 10.5/10.6 clients -- or full 10.5 servers? And knowing that I must only update scripts remotely from 10.5.

 

(For those that wonder, one of the obvious problems under 10.6 is that "proactive" scripts do not show the "options" correctly -- there's a blank box where there should be the verification/compression/etc. selections...)

 

I'd like to see if my occasional engine respawns stop if I run the engine under 10.6.

 

But if EMC thinks there's no immediate advantage to updating and engine machine to 10.6 at this time - that would be worth knowing...

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I ran into an issue which may be Snow Leopard related. I have a media set which is an NFS mount. Under Leopard, Retrospect would mount this and use it. Under Snow Leopard, Retrospect would mount this, but then issue a message that it couldn't find the mount ... and try again, mounting it under a different name (retrospect, retrospect-1, retrospect-2, ...).

 

It turns out that mounting 10,000 or so instances is an effective denial-of-service tool once the kernel runs out of memory....

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Not only did it try 10,000 or so times, but it succeeded each time! I had /Volumes/retrospect, /Volumes/retrospect-1, /Volumes/retrospect-2, .... (Today it got up to about /Volumes/retrospect-238 by the time I got it stopped.)

 

Here's a bit of the log from today (I got rid of the backup scripts referencing those backup sets, which has slowed the process enough that I can do backups with some supervision).

 

9/4/09 2:28:39 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] #2> Command line is /Library/Application Support/Retrospect/RetrospectEngine.bundle/Contents/MacOS/RetroEngine

9/4/09 2:28:45 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] RetroEngine(24029,0xb179b000) malloc: *** error for object 0x2217eb8: Non-aligned pointer being freed

9/4/09 2:28:45 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

9/4/09 2:28:46 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] #2> #Volume $[1]retrospect$[2] is unavailable.

9/4/09 2:28:46 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] $[44]Please insert it and try again.

9/4/09 2:28:47 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] RetroEngine(24029,0xb1397000) malloc: *** error for object 0x2430dd8: Non-aligned pointer being freed

9/4/09 2:28:47 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

9/4/09 2:28:47 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] #2> #Volume $[1]retrospect$[2] is unavailable.

9/4/09 2:28:47 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] $[44]Please insert it and try again.

9/4/09 2:28:48 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] RetroEngine(24029,0xb1397000) malloc: *** error for object 0x242d728: Non-aligned pointer being freed

9/4/09 2:28:48 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

9/4/09 2:28:48 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] #2> #Volume $[1]retrospect$[2] is unavailable.

9/4/09 2:28:48 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] $[44]Please insert it and try again.

9/4/09 2:28:48 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] RetroEngine(24029,0xb1397000) malloc: *** error for object 0x2216b18: Non-aligned pointer being freed

9/4/09 2:28:48 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

9/4/09 2:28:48 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] #2> #Volume $[1]retrospect$[2] is unavailable.

9/4/09 2:28:48 PM com.retrospect.RetroEngine[24029] $[44]Please insert it and try again.

 

A new mount appeared every second or so, which would seem to match the timing in the log.

 

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I can not think of any immediate advantage.

 

We will be working toward being 64 bit so that we can use more RAM, but that is coming in an update later.

All the tasks I have tried in Retrospect 8.1 show it is CPU bound as the main performance constraint. The only realistic way this can be resolved is if Retrospect 8 makes some use of multi-threading. I say some since clearly it currently makes no use of this at all unless you count running more than one script/task at the same time.

 

As one of the big changes in Snow Leopard is the inclusion of Grand Central Dispatch to make it 'easier' for developers to add multi-threading to their applications, is there any likelihood of this being done to a future Retrospect update? Personally I would be more than willing to accept Retrospect becoming Snow Leopard only if this meant the performance improved substantially.

 

As things stand it is currently little better than Retrospect 6.1 on a PowerMac G4 in terms of speed

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As things stand it is currently little better than Retrospect 6.1 on a PowerMac G4 in terms of speed

 

 

If you're willing for the program to be Snow Leopard only you're going to be needing an Intel machine for that. PPC will always be slower, Grand Central Dispatch or not.

My post was not clear, but I bought an 8-core Mac Pro with 10GB of RAM specifically to run Retrospect 8.1 compared to the previous Dual Processor PowerMac G4 887MHz with 2GB running Retrospect 6.1, in the foolish belief it would be a lot faster.

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I ran into an issue which may be Snow Leopard related. I have a media set which is an NFS mount. Under Leopard, Retrospect would mount this and use it. Under Snow Leopard, Retrospect would mount this, but then issue a message that it couldn't find the mount ... and try again, mounting it under a different name (retrospect, retrospect-1, retrospect-2, ...).
Anton, we're trying to reproduce your issue, and we need to know exactly:

 

1. How are you mounting the NFS share on the Mac?

 

2. How are you telling Retrospect to use the share?

 

The sooner you can reply, the better. We're trying to get all Snow Leopard bugs eliminated.

 

Thanks!

 

-Eric

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