MTM Posted January 14, 2003 Report Share Posted January 14, 2003 Periodically, over the past six weeks while doing a daily normal backup Retrospect has hung the WinNT4 server while backing up one of the Macintosh clients (all running OS9.1). Our small LAN consisting of 13 PCs and 7 Macs has run fine for almost a year in it's current configuration. But recently while a Mac client is being backed up the server freezes, requiring it to be rebooted. Once the reboot is completed and the backup set tape in use for that night's backup's catalog is repaired. and the backup restarted manually usually the backup runs successfully, but not always. These failures can happen with any of the Mac clients and on any file in the process of being backed up. This freezing never happens while a PC client being backed up. Has anyone seen this and if so how might we fix it? Thanks, MTM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted January 15, 2003 Report Share Posted January 15, 2003 That it worked sucessfully for a year indicates that something in the environment is now failing. What do the Macs have in common in relation to the network map? Same router, switch or hub? If you can consistently reproduce this on any Macintosh client, try connecting one of them directly to the server with a cross-over cable. Does the problem go away? Were any new software packages installed on the Mac around the time this started happening? If so, try booting a client with Base Extensions plus the Retrospect Client - does the problem go away? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MTM Posted January 15, 2003 Author Report Share Posted January 15, 2003 The hanging is never consistant - any one of the 7 Macs may or may not hang Retrospect and the server. As an example, las Friday night the crash happened while one G4 was being backed up. I restarted the server (NT4 SP6 ******* RAM) and recataloged the tape and ran the back up again. This time this particular G4 was successfully backed up. Then a few minutes later as another G4 was being backed up Retrospect crashed again. I restarted, recataloged and ran the backup again and this time there were no crashes. Then on Monday night the backup ran fine - all Macs successfully backed up. But again last night another crash, BTW all of these crashes never occur at the same spot, i.e., the same file and sometimes not necessarily the same folder. All the Macs are configured identically - all with the same apps, extensions etc. The files being backed up are graphics files from Photshop, Illustrator, QuarkExpress etc. with a few MSWord docs and Excel files and e-mail, bookmarks and addrssbooks. All Macs are connected on the LAN through a Nortel managed switch all running at 100BaseT. Sometimes we can go days with no problems. Monday through Thurday backups are done as normal backups and Friday is a recycle. There is one possibility that I have thought might be a problem - that being big Postscript files but I would imagine that a crash would occur at the very same spot if this were the case. To be safe I have had these files removed from the backup clients since they should have been deleted anyway as they are only interium files required to create PDF files from QuarkExpress. We'll see what happens tonight. In addition, I have had the Mac users move the files they can't afford to loose to the server and I back these up as well with no problem. One final note - last night the Retrospect Log was wiped out as well. This has never happened before. Thanks for the response I hope the above is helpful MTM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MTM Posted February 7, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 7, 2003 Here we go again!!! After a few weeks without crashes they are BACK!!! Last Friday we experienced 4 crashes all from different Macs and different files. Each time Retrospect froze the server we attempted to pick up where the back up stopped. After recataloging at the request of Retrospect the back up picked up in the right spot only to crash on another Mac. Then This past few days there have been no problems until Thursday night when it crashed 4 times and this time there was one instance that a crash occurred while backing up a file located on the server itself. After each crash we recataloged, but this time things were different. Once we started to run an immediate back up Retrospect scanned the file file folder to be backed up and it found all files were backed up, but then as Retrospect attemted to locate the next folder for a back up and error 216 appeared saying the tape was erased. And, it was. So, we marked this tape as missing and put in another tape (not new). And, again the same thing happened. On the 3rd attempt we used a new tape thinking that perhaps it was the tape itself (albeit I find it odd that a bad tape would cause such a problem). All went well and then Retrospect crashed the server again - from a diffenent Mac that before. Has anybody ever seen this? If the Dantz techies are reading this forum please HELP! I am about to reinstall Retrospect to see if we can rid ourselves of the problem, but before I do are there any suggestions or experiences that might shed some light on this VERY Annoying Problem!! Thanks in advance, MTM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyJ Posted February 24, 2003 Report Share Posted February 24, 2003 Quote: The files being backed up are graphics files from Photshop, Illustrator, QuarkExpress etc. with a few MSWord docs and Excel files and e-mail, bookmarks and addrssbooks Are there any 2-gig+ source files on these machines? What version of Retrospect? What version of client software? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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