gregoryflood Posted May 24, 2003 Report Share Posted May 24, 2003 A month or so ago, I posted the following message in response to a thread on this subject: "I have noticed that there have been quite a few posts about this problem since Retrospect 5 for OS X was introduced. I have also had similar problems on my home office TWAN (that's a teeny-weeny area network), which consists of a PowerMac G-4 (the backup server), a FlowerPower iMac and an iBook. There are linked to each other and an ADSL line for Internet access through a Netopia Ethernet router. Backup goes to an HP SCSI DAT tape drive through an Adaptec 29160 SCSI card. With this setup and running Retrospect under OS X (all versions since 10.1 to 10.2.5), I have had frequent hangs on Net Retry (while the client is being scanned) and/or error 519 during backup, if somehow the scan is completed. By "frequent" I mean that I have never, ever, been able to do a complete backup of this very simple network under OS X. I note that the backup server itself backs up OK to the tape drive, which to me would indicate that there are no particular SCSI issues involved. In addition and thankfully, Retrospect 5 does run under OS 9 and is perfectly able to back up the entire nework without any problems (it's just a pain in the butt to have to boot into OS 9, as I find I spend almost all my time now in OS X). This last points seems to me to indicate that there are no major network issues, but to be on the safe side, I followed the advice in one of the technical notes I found on the Dantz website. It recommended that two of the machines be connected directly to each other with an Ethernet cross-over cable. Even with this setup, I got the Net Retry hang during scan of the client. If anyone out there has any ideas what is going on here and can offer a solution, I would be most grateful." I had several replies and helpful suggestions to address this problem and I'd like to thank those who responded. Unfortunately, nothing seems to work. As I have indicated, this is a very simple network and the fact that the problem occurs even when using a cross-over cable seems to me to rule out any problem with the network hardware itself. I have also installed the Retrospect 5.0 software (and yes, I am using v. 5.0.238 and the v. 5.0.540 clients) on the iBook and tried to scan the other two machines. I should perhaps clarify that at present this problem is occurring during the scan of the remote hard disks, even before any file transfer is begun. The programme hangs on "Net Retry" and eventually "error 519" if I let it sit long enough. One interesting note is that all machines have both OS9 and OSX partitions and it is only when scanning the OSX partition that the problem occurs. I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't some kind of weird TCP/IP problem, but I just don't have the technical expertise to diagnose it. Any help would be gratefully accepted. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregoryflood Posted May 25, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 Further to my message of yesterday, I tried backing up just the backup server itself and the the two client OS9 partitions, using Retrospect 5.0 under OSX. As I expected, the server backed OK and the programme was able to successfully complete the scan of both client volumes. During the actual backup, however, the same Net Retry/Error 519 problems recurred. Fortunately, the software is apparently able to remember how much progress has been made in the backup. So, by repeatedly restarting the backup of the clients volumes, I was eventually able to successfully get a complete backup. Unfortuantely, this approach does not seem to work with the OSX volumes, because the programme is unable to successfully complete the initial scan of those clients. As ever, if anyone can help, I'd appreciate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted May 25, 2003 Report Share Posted May 25, 2003 Quote: As ever, if anyone can help, I'd appreciate There have been reports on the RetroTALK mailing list about volumes with corrupt directory information casuing this sort of Net Retry problems. That you are successful on one volume of a machine but not the other makes such a theory possible (that it happens this way on two different machines does not disprove the theory, although it does add a bit of unlikeliness). - Have you done any checks on the OS X volumes (Disk Warrior, Norton, etc)? - Have you tried defining a subvolume on the OS X volumes and tried to back that up? Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregoryflood Posted May 26, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 26, 2003 Thanks for the info. What is and where can I access "RetroTalk"? And, yes, I've run Norton Disk Doctor and Drive 10 on both clients and also optimized all their partitions. No serious directory problems were encountered. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregoryflood Posted May 26, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 26, 2003 I've also tried defining sub-volumes. The problem with this approach is that each sub-volume has to be relatively small and in essence this means every folder has to be set up as a separate sub-volume. It also implies that every application, document, etc. must in a folder. This is a pain in the butt to maintain. Also, the way OSX works, many apps don't work correctly if they're moved from their original location in the Applications folder to a sub-folder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CallMeDave Posted May 27, 2003 Report Share Posted May 27, 2003 Quote: I've also tried defining sub-volumes. The problem with this approach is that each sub-volume has to be relatively small and in essence this means every folder has to be set up as a separate sub-volume I suggested this not as a long term method, but as a troubleshooting tool to help get to the bottom of the problem. - Is there a cut-off size where you get communication errors on a defined sub-volume? - Do you get the _same_ results using a x-over cable then you do using your wired LAN? - Has the machine running Retrospect been the same computer every time? In other words, have you attempted to connect to one of these clients from a different host computer? It's possible that the issue is with the ethernet port on your Retrospect machine. Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregoryflood Posted May 31, 2003 Author Report Share Posted May 31, 2003 Thanks again to all those who have tried to help. Based on the number of posts I've seen on this issue, it should be one of real concern to Dantz, although they don't seem to react to it officially. On the upside, I found the following in an earlier thread on the subject: "I have, quite by accident, discovered a workaround. Having some other application on the G4 access the internet while Retrospect is running will get me past the Net Retry hang. I've found that if I leave my e-mail program on the G4 running (Entourage, but I don't think it makes any difference) and set it to check my mail every minute, then I can back up the PowerBook successfully. Of course, if I'm doing an unattended backup, I get all sorts of errors when the partition with my e-mail database on the G4 gets backed up." While it makes no sense that this gimmick should work, I've tried it and it does. Thanks again to "dwroberts" for this assist. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.