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Client (PC & Mac) behavior on shutdown?


awnews

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I've been evaling RMS6.5 with several Windows (98/XP) clients. Today I set up a Mac OS9 client and will try out an OSX client shortly.

 

I noticed that the Mac client includes a (approx) "wait for shutdown" option that I don't see on the PC client. I'm assuming that this tells the Mac to not shutdown if the Client is in the middle of a backup but instead wait until it is done. This got me thinking about the PC Client. What does the PC Client do if the user attempts to shutdown the PC (in a normal way, not a brute-force "power switch off") while the client is running? Does it shutdown immediately, wait to finish, shutdown immediately if running the backup phase but wait if in the snapshot phase, etc.? Does it just do [what it does] or does it inform the user?

 

We all know how long Snapshots can take, so it would be very annoying to users to have to wait a long time for the client to finish before shutting down, even more so if it didn't tell them what was going on.

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Hi

 

The wait at shutdown feature for Mac OS (classic only) prevents the computer from shutting down until a backup starts or finishes. Unfortunately we havent been able to implement this on PCS and OSX.

 

I just tested the PC shutdown on my XP laptop. The client machine shut down immediately with no warning. The backup machine logged an error 519 and moved on to the next source.

 

Nate

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Thanks for the info.

 

On the PC what happens (what do you think happens....) to the backup in the case of the immediate shutdown?

 

Is any data already backed up available?

 

Does it matter if the data phase is still running or if the data phase is done and Retro is running the snapshot (i.e. is the data "corrupted" or snapshot "corrupted")?

 

Is that session corrupted? Is the entire (file) backup corrupted?

 

Will the next backup work OK the next time if that session was shutdown in this manner?

 

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Hi

 

Retrospect is actually quite fault tolerant in these cases. The client is not talking directly to the backup data so it can't wreck the set when it powers off.

 

In a situation where the client shuts down, Retrospect sees that it can no longer get data from the source. At that point it closes the session and moves on. Anything that was already physically copied to the backup media is noted in the catalog and remains in the backup - just like a backup that completed successfully.

 

Depending on when the shutdown occured you may be missing some files or the snapshot. In subsequent backups Retrospect will just pick up where it left off copying only the files that are not in the backup set. I believe the session is built as you go along so you should be able to browse it.

 

Nate

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi.

 

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but it prompted a question:

 

If a script is set to 'Verify' and the client shuts down or disconnects during the execution does the data that where already written to tape ever get verified or is it just entered in the catalog "as is"?

 

It is a common event when backing up portables.

 

regards

Thomas

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