hmseiden Posted December 13, 2009 Report Share Posted December 13, 2009 I had a planned shutdown of my Retro 'server' (Mac Mini) running Retrospect Backup 8.1 (626) occur while a backup was running. What that did is creamed the preferences file (apparently). Also the machine was in left in a state where it would NOT restart on it's own with out a complete power cycle. After the restart was complete, the preferences were empty- no list of media, no schedules, no scripts, no history. I'm thinking I can get some of the settings back by restoring a previous backup- that's (a big if?) if I can rebuild my system from the last good backup. How best to get there? I will try the following: 1. Rebuild my backup(s) from the existing, hopefully intact media drive's last good backup. 2. Reconstruct/rebuild the remaining media drives. Further advice or recommendations are appreciated, as I haven't tried or completed the rebuild/restoration before. A text file of the console log is attached. Henry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted December 13, 2009 Report Share Posted December 13, 2009 Did the config80.bak file give you your settings after renaming it to .dat? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hmseiden Posted December 14, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 14, 2009 Did not try that, but thanks, Robin. That's a good idea. I went forward to restore the files (that were apparently trashed) instead. First I located my Media sets. Then I restored the trashed/missing files, all of them actually. That worked pretty well. After that I was able to pull up the scripts and complete the backups that did not complete during the power issue. All quiet now and the backups are chugging away. One question for Robin- are the current scripts AND settings located in that config80.dat file (located in ~/Library/Application Support/Retrospect/) or is there another location? It seems to be about 786KB. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted December 14, 2009 Report Share Posted December 14, 2009 All scripts and settings are in that file. Catalogs are still catalogs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hmseiden Posted December 16, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 16, 2009 Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted January 23, 2010 Report Share Posted January 23, 2010 (edited) I noticed that the config80.dat file also contains all the logs for scripts that have run. Can you explain why this decission has been made, because to me this looks like a serious design flaw. It increases the chance of getting the config80.dat file corrupted and thus loosing settings and info for the Indigo setup. Why not let every script write it's own logfile to a folder on the disk. Then you won't have the problem of missing the data of a script when Indigo crashes. Edited January 23, 2010 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted January 23, 2010 Report Share Posted January 23, 2010 I noticed that the config80.dat file also contains all the logs for scripts that have run. Where did you notice that? 'Cause it's not true. Retrospect has always written its Operations Log to a separate file. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted January 24, 2010 Report Share Posted January 24, 2010 (edited) I opened a config80.dat file in TextEditor and saw a lot of log lines in there. And it would also explain the enormous file size of 46 MB. Last night I ran a full backup that stopped half way during the comparison stage. I tried to quit Retrospect, but that didn't work, so I restarted the Mac. After that Retrospect lost information about the job, as if it never had run. That fits in the behaviour of having one file to store everything and not saving it properly at certain intervals. So I hope I'm wrong, but at this moment I have the idea that I'm not. Where can I find the logfiles from Retrospect? I looked in /library/application support/retrospect but I don't see any logfiles there. Edited January 24, 2010 by Guest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted January 25, 2010 Report Share Posted January 25, 2010 Out of curiousity -- how many clients/scripts do you have? I have about 45 clients with 8 proactive scripts -- and I've never had my config80.dat file get above 8M. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted January 25, 2010 Report Share Posted January 25, 2010 I have 4 clients (including the machine running the Retrospect engine) and 6 jobs that are really in use. 3 other jobs have been used ocasionally. And I still need to remove 3 restore jobs. So that makes a total of 12 jobs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted January 25, 2010 Report Share Posted January 25, 2010 /Library/Application Support/Retrospect/operations_log.utx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted January 25, 2010 Report Share Posted January 25, 2010 That's a really, really large config80.dat file for only 4 clients and 6 activities (based on my experience...) Is your operations log bigger than that? (My current config80.dat files is 3M and my operations log is 5.7M -- this is with doing daily backups of about 45 sources...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted January 25, 2010 Report Share Posted January 25, 2010 /Library/Application Support/Retrospect/operations_log.utx Thanks CallMeDave. You may now CallMeBlind :glasses: I was looking for a Log folder or files with the .log extension. Totally missed that one. But.... Operations_log.utx is 9,9 MB on my system, while Config80.bak is 43,4 MB. And if I open both files in TextEditor, I can see that lines similar like those from Operations_log.utx are also present in the Config80.bak file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted January 25, 2010 Report Share Posted January 25, 2010 Um, the problem statement seems to be changing here. In the post upthread, it was the "Config80.dat" file that was purported to have the log contents: I opened a config80.dat file in TextEditor and saw a lot of log lines in there. Now it seems to be the "Config80.bak" file: Operations_log.utx is 9,9 MB on my system, while Config80.bak is 43,4 MB.And if I open both files in TextEditor, I can see that lines similar like those from Operations_log.utx are also present in the Config80.bak file. Regardless, sounds like your config file may be hosed, perhaps even causing the log file to be appended to the wrong file. Because there is no documentation, finding the location of things like log files is a bit of an adventure. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted January 26, 2010 Report Share Posted January 26, 2010 Sorry, config80.bak should of course be config80.dat. And I've set the max size for the logfile to be 10 MB. That is probably the reason why my logfile tops at 9.9 MB. Has one of you tried to open config80.dat in TextEditor to see if there are log lines present? I'm curious if I'm the only one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted January 26, 2010 Report Share Posted January 26, 2010 Yes -- I've opened my .bak file and looked at it. I *believe* this holds the "Log" information when you click on a past "Activity". Which then rotates out of the config file when the activities rotate out. The default # of "scheduled activities" to show in the preferences is 10. Do you have that kicked up higher (to 20, 50 or 100?) That could explain why your config80.dat file is so much larger than mine... But it could also explain if you are showing a larger number of activities, that corruption might be more likely to happen. Maybe.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted January 26, 2010 Report Share Posted January 26, 2010 I have default # of scheduled activities also at 10. Haven't changed that. I did however change the max number of loglines to 999.999 to test the log analyzer that is posted on this forum. Today I reset that number to 999 lines. Maybe the config80.dat file will shrink in size now. If that doesn't work then I'll delete the config file and start over again. The file was made with one of the very first Retrospect 8 versions and a lot of bugs have been fixed since then. Maybe that's the cause of the big file size. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted March 21, 2010 Report Share Posted March 21, 2010 About a month ago I replaced my old Mac mini with a new one and started with a fresh Retrospect install (version 8.1, build 626). It now has 8 backup scripts of which 1 is not in use. The others run on daily or weekly. My config80.dat file has already grown to 22,4 MB and again contains a huge amount of log lines among other data. The real logfile operations_log.utx is only 3,5 MB big. I do hope the Retrospect developers will redesign this part of Retrospect to make it more stable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted March 22, 2010 Report Share Posted March 22, 2010 A 22 MB config file is pretty normal. Mine is much larger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted March 22, 2010 Report Share Posted March 22, 2010 Mine used to be double the size. (I'm still talking about the config80.dat :wink: ) But why did you choose to use one file for configuration data and historical data? It's my opinion that this can lead to corruption in that configuration file because writing historical data fails for some reason. For example when the Retrospect server process hangs. If you split this into multiple files, the chance of corrupting the Retrospect configuration is much smaller. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swalker Posted March 31, 2010 Report Share Posted March 31, 2010 "If you split this into multiple files, the chance of corrupting the Retrospect configuration is much smaller." Exactly. Is anyone listening? Just because it is supposed to be OK in someone's theory doesn't mean that it is not a real problem for us users. Foolish design decision. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted March 31, 2010 Report Share Posted March 31, 2010 My config80.dat file has already grown to 22,4 MB and again contains a huge amount of log lines among other data. The real logfile operations_log.utx is only 3,5 MB big. And from this you infer what? Certainly not that the 22.4 MB config file contains more log information then the 3.5 MB log file; there is nothing to suggest that is the case. Just as possible that the 22.4 MB config file contains 22.2 MB of configuration information and .2 MB of convenience log information. And it's just as possible that the amount of current log info maintained in the config file has zero to do with corruption issues. Communicating with the Retrospect engineering team as if they're less informed then you in these issues is quite arrogant, methinks. Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted April 1, 2010 Report Share Posted April 1, 2010 Well Dave, I not sure where you took your reading lessons or when, but I never suggested that the Retrospect team is less informed than I am. Thinking that you can call people arrogant because you don't agree with them is arrogant, methinks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted April 1, 2010 Report Share Posted April 1, 2010 My post was in response to the "Is anyone listening?" comment made by someone else (hence the "In response to [color:orange]Stewart Walker[/color]" at the top of the post). Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
macpro Posted April 1, 2010 Report Share Posted April 1, 2010 But the quote you used is from me, so that's why I thought you were referring to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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