rayphillips Posted July 11, 2003 Report Share Posted July 11, 2003 I have Retrospect Single Server 6.5.319 running on a Windows Server 2003 Standard machine and unfortunately it crashes at least once per day with this message: Retrospect has encountered a serious error: Assertion failure at "tsynch.cpp-127" I've not found any reference to this problem (but have clicked the button to send a report to Dantz each time it happens, so the list moderators should have access to the necessary details). Any help appreciated since the frequency of crashes makes the backup machine almost useless. Let me know if more information is requied. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 11, 2003 Report Share Posted July 11, 2003 I have found those assert logs in our system. I have asked our QA team to investigate. What type of backup device are you using? How is it connected to the computer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rayphillips Posted July 12, 2003 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2003 The backups are being done to a RAID 5 disk array which is composed of four Seagate ST3160021A 160 GB disks attached to an AVLAB Ultra ATA100 PCI-bus IDE controller (which is to be replaced shortly by a Promise FastTrak100 TX2). Windows Server 2003's disk manager was used to create the array; it has an NTFS file system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 12, 2003 Report Share Posted July 12, 2003 If you write to a different destination, does the problem still happen? Dantz has not tested with this RAID configuration, although I have asked our engineers to review these assert logs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rayphillips Posted July 12, 2003 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2003 Ah, I didn't expect there to be a problem using an array like this since Retrospect can write to any device Windows can access can't it? I suppose I could try writing the backups to a single IDE disk attached to one of the motherboard's IDE controllers, but it would be difficult. I don't have another disk big enough at my disposal so I 'd have to remove one of the four disks from the RAID array, attach it directly to the motherboard and create about forty new scripts which write to backup sets on that disk. It'd be necessary to leave it in that configuration for a fortnight or so to be completely sure the problem had been overcome, during which time my backups wouldn't be protected by the security of a RAID array. So, if it's OK I'd like to wait for feedback from you engineers before resorting to that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 12, 2003 Report Share Posted July 12, 2003 I you backup to the non raid disk as a "test" then that can help narrow things down quickly, helping us pinpoint the cause of the problem. I am hoping it is not related to the RAID, since Dantz does not have either of those RAIDs at this time for testing purposes on our end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rayphillips Posted July 14, 2003 Author Report Share Posted July 14, 2003 OK, I'll try that but will first wait a day or two until the Promise card I mentioned arrives to see if it helps. Perhaps you could add a proviso about RAID arrays beneath the statement that "All Hard Disk Drives and Removable Media Drives are fully supported" which appears near the bottom of this page on your Web site? http://dantz.com/en/products/win_singleserver/requirements.dtml I take it that Retrospect doesn't rely totally on the Windows operating system to handle its interations with Backup Sets on hard disks? I've written many GB of files to this array using Windows Explorer (and deleted them) to test it's functionality and so far it's been fine. I had the idea I might one day attach an Apple Xserver RAID to this machine when it gets short of disk space. Given my experience so far it seems that might well not not work properly with Retrospect? That's a pity because I really like the program. Could you say whether mirroring the drives instead of using RAID 5 would be less likely to cause a problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted July 14, 2003 Report Share Posted July 14, 2003 Are you using a Disk Backup set or a File Backup Set with this configuration? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rayphillips Posted July 15, 2003 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2003 They're disk backup sets (about 85). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rayphillips Posted July 16, 2003 Author Report Share Posted July 16, 2003 The Promise card hasn't arrived yet, but I thought I'd report Retrospect crashed a couple of times today with this message which I don't think I've seen before: Retrospect has encountered a serious error: Assertion failure at "elem.cpp-867" I clicked the OK button to send an error report to Dantz. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rayphillips Posted July 17, 2003 Author Report Share Posted July 17, 2003 I thought I'd report a new type of crash which happened twice today. The symptoms were: - Retrospect stopped responding--the cursor turned into an hour glass whenever it was over the Retrospect window - the entire Retrospect window turned white (not the title bar) but it could be minimised and restored - the first time it happened the taskmanager showed Retrospect was continuously using 99% of the cpu's time I suspect this may be related in some way to proactive backup scripts, which I began to use last night. I'm not sure but these crashes may have coincided with a client attempting to initiate a backup by using the "As soon as possible" proactive option. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rayphillips Posted August 13, 2003 Author Report Share Posted August 13, 2003 OK, the Promise card arrived and I set up a Windows Server 2003 software RAID 5 array on it, using the same four 160 GB Seagate drives as before. The Retrospect crashing problems continued so I removed one of the disks from the array, connected it to the motherboard secondary IDEcontroller , created a new NTFS partition on it and reconnected it to the Promise card. The RAID array is still a member of my disk backup sets but I stopped Retrospect writing to it; it's now using only the single 160 GB disk. (Well, there is one backup set on the system disk too, as before.) Retrospect crashed on the first night with this arrangement (that was 1 August, and I clicked the button to send a report to Dantz) but has not fallen over since. So, the conclusion is Retrospect doesn't like Windows Server 2003 RAID arrays being members of its disk backup sets, yes? Is there any hope of fixing it so that won't be a problem? Doing so would certainly be helpful for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ssevenup Posted October 2, 2003 Report Share Posted October 2, 2003 I got this error this morning under Win2k, and I have no RAID involved. This was a standard network to tape backup. Last week we got a cpp-410 assertion error that Dantz told me was a low level disk index problem. They suggested wiping and reformatting. Great, not like that's much work or anything. I wonder if upgrading from 6.5.276 to 6.5.319 is even a good idea at this point? Tyan Tiger Dual 450 w/512MB - 80GB WD ATA disk on built-in interface Win2k (all patches applied) SP4 may be a bad idea from what I have seen lately, but on the other hand it's needed for worm/virus vulnerability Retrospect 6.5.276 Adaptec 29160N Two Overland Data DLT1 libraries Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.