Can Backup Succeed Despite an Error -43?

[Shinaberry]

I'm backing up to a backup set that is located on a remote machine which is automounted by Retrospect 6.1 using AFP.

 

Some days it appears to work fine with no errors in the log. Other days I get an error -43, can't access catalog for backup set message. Despite the error, it appears to have actually completed the backup and there are occasionally miscompare errors, which seem to strengthen that argument.

 

Even though it appears to be working, it makes me a little twitchy to rely on backups that generate errors about accessing the catalog file. I don't want to have a rude awakening someday when I really need to recover something and find out it's not there or worse, is there but cannot be accessed.

 

Can anyone shed some light on whether this is a real problem or not?

 

Thanks,

Derek

[rhwalker]

Check in /Volumes on the Retrospect machine when the remote volume is not mounted. You will need to use the Terminal to navigate there because the Finder hides this directory.

 

Retrospect may have created a directory (folder) there and may have been happily backing up to that. The created directory will be hidden when the remote volume is mounted on top of that mount point. It's a unix "feature".

 

Russ

[Shinaberry]

No sign of a directory for the remote volume in the local /Volumes directory.

 

I also viewed the contents of the backup set in question for the session that had the error and it appears that there is in fact data there despite the error about being unable to access the catalog file for the backup set.

 

Any idea if there are logging features of Retrospect or the AFP mounting system that I can turn on to shed more light on the issue? So far, nothing in /Library/Logs or /var/log has been of assistance.

 

Derek

[rhwalker]

That's odd.

 

The miscompare errors are probably unrelated to this.

 

Why don't you try putting the catalog on the local Retrospect machine.

[Shinaberry]

Odd indeed!

 

I'm sure as well that the miscompare errors aren't part of this problem or really even a problem at all. I see them all the time on things like log files, cache files or other files that are open at the time of backup. I only mentioned them since it pointed to a conclusion that the backup really succeeded in spite of the error.

 

I suppose it couldn't hurt to have the catalog file be on the system being backup up since it can always be recreated from the backup set file if needed, but somehow that's not very satisfying. :-)

 

It seems like the data is in fact in the backup file despite the error. So, I guess my worst fear, that I'm not really backed up, can't be realized.

[twickland]

I suppose it couldn't hurt to have the catalog file be on the system being backup up since it can always be recreated from the backup set file if needed, but somehow that's not very satisfying. :-)

If you are using a File Backup Set, the catalog actually needs to reside on the same volume as the data. In fact, it needs to be located in the same folder too.

 

Whenever one encounters a -43 error, there is always the possibility of a filesystem problem on the volume. This may be something you will want to check out.

[Shinaberry]

Well, I guess I won't be putting the catalog file on the local system after all. I don't think I knew about that requirement, but I've always had the catalog file in the same directory as the backup set file just for the sake of convenience.

 

I ran Disk Utility and verified the disks on both systems. No problems at all, so I'm guessing that the filesystems themselves are not to blame.

 

Last night made the forth backup since I rearranged to this setup. I've now had two nights with no error messages and two nights with the -43 error. If the pattern holds, I will see another error tonight. Four or five data points is hardly conclusive evidence however.

 

I suppose I could try permanently mounting the remote volume at boot via a startup item and just leave it mounted all the time. If only I could afford it, I'd just dump all my PPC boxes and upgrade to version 8.