BrightStor Arcserve 9 - Blank Log files 2

[markm999]

I am sure other people must have this problem. We have a server with Brightstor Arcserve 9 - been going fine for about 4 months. Last week job logs stopped being shown in the manager, on inspection I found that the Activity log was also blank.

Both of these tabs just show blank where they used to show full log and appropriae Job log. CA recommended to run DBCHECK etc (?????) puzzled by this as the logs arent held in a DB at all - sigh anyway - checked the \log folder - files ARE there - manually purged the Arcserve.log file rebooted - still no luck.

Any ideas ???

Mark Mulholland
Auckland, New Zealand

 

[Cyklops]

Mark,

you call the log 'arcserve.log'. In version 9 it is called 'Brightstor.log'.
I regularly import Brightstor.logs from users to check it with BrightStor's log organizer and thius works fine
regards

 

[markm999]

Thanks for your reply cyklops - but this is a little more serious. Turns out after a little more probing around that the system is throwing an exception error when writing to the log. (show in dr.watson log and in generated log under the Arcserve\log install path). The arcserve file shows a memory dump and classes this as a "continuable fault".

Obviously something really wrong and have now raised and official fault with CA - AND paid for it - using one of our 5 paid support events. Anyway will post what the outsome is.

Personally I suspect a reinstall and recovery of the DB. But we shall see.

Markm999

 

[dmarton1]

Hi there

we had the same problem with one of our customers.
We had to investigate some hours until we found the problem that was causing the empty Job & Activity Log Views in the BAB Manager.

We have composed a 'small' bug report with possible workaround and sent it to CA tech support (they now could reproduce the BUG and are in going to fix it).

Here our bug report (sorry for non perfect english, but we are german speaking people in Switzerland).



Bugreport in ARCserve 9 NT/W2K

After running a generic job and restarting the BAB services (manually or running cstop) or rebooting the server, ARCserve Manager can not view any job log files (incl. Activity log) any more.

Error description

After running generic jobs (like tapecopy) and stopping the ARCserve 9 services (or rebooting the server) the ARCserve Manager can not display Log files any more (incl. the Activity Log). It just show empty windows.

Problem found

Generic jobs (like tapecopy) place their Log files into the folder \as9\LOG\cas_user_logs\ instead of \as9\LOG\cas_user_logs\caroot because they have no owner. The location is updated into the file \as9\LOG\users, when the ARCserve 9 services are being stopped or the server is getting rebooted. Unfortunately the file is updated with a wrong path so when a user afterwards wants to look at the job log of the generic job, any other job or even the activity log, then the caloggerd.exe goes into DRWATSON and the problem of not visible job logs and activity logs remains even after rebooting the server.

Reproduction / Workaround

After running the first generic job, its job log tab is still visible until you close the manager.

Just to show that the problem does not appear until running cstop or stopping the ARCserve 9 services manually or rebooting the server; start the manager again and click on the generic job. Switch to the job log tab. Close manager.

Only after running cstop, the \as9\LOG\users file is updated incorrectly (check content).

Now you have to correct the wrong entries in the users file manually (replace the empty space at the beginning with caroot and the double backslash with just one backslash to reflect the correct path to the logfile) and save your changes to the \as9\LOG\users file BEFORE you run cstart again.

run cstart

start manager

switch to the job log tab of the generic job

WARNING: If you do not correct the users file content before cstart, then this happens:

cstart

start manager

in job status click on the generic job

in lower right panel switch to job log

The caloggerd.exe process will now go into a DRWATSON

The job log tab remains empty and just shows you "the job log is not available"

Also activity log is empty

You will not be able to see any job log's until you cstop, correct the users file and cstart again !!!

Hope this helps

David A. Marton, restorage gmbh, switzerland

 

[markm999]

Outstanding reply - your scenario matches exactly what we are seeing - in that we get a Dr.Watson log etc - AND we do have 2 x Generic jobs running. So it fits.

We will attempt to apply these fixes and see how things go. Many thanks for the information - hugely helpful - AND faster than paid CA support could come back with the answers to us.

Mark Mulholland
Technical Services
Adis Insiternational

 

[markm999]

Ok - that was it - bang on the money - this was indeed the problem. I ran cstop, edited the lines in the \log\users file that corresponded to the Generic Jobs, ran cstart and everything worked - logs and all.

Many thanks for your assistance.

Mark Mulholland

 

[XtremSam12]

I am running several servers using win 2000 and BAB V9. All were working perfectly now I am getting this same issue not only on one but on all servers running Arcserve V9.

I tried the solution posted before of editing the users file, but I still do not get any logs when I open the manager.

I got confused where it mentions that I need to modify with caroot and instead of using 2 backslash, use only one. Should I only modify that line or the whole lines.

Thanks in advance,

SDLC

 

[markm999]

Hi XtremSam12,

Here is an extract from a live \log\users file. It was the 2nd and 3rd lined that were causing grief. I inserted the caroot and checked path and things went fine. You must issue a restart though.

caroot A:BrightStor.log
caroot D:cas_user_logs\J0000391.LOG
caroot D:cas_user_logs\J0000392.LOG
caroot D:cas_user_logs\caroot\J0000002.LOG
caroot D:cas_user_logs\caroot\J0000003.LOG
caroot D:cas_user_logs\caroot\J0000004.LOG

Hope this helps.

Mark Mulholland

 

[xp2002]

I've got the same problem and I'm editing right now the users file. I keep on getting that DRWATSON error when i use cstart.

This is an extract of my users file:
_BackEnd_ D:cadbd.log
_BackEnd_ D:camediad.log
_BackEnd_ D:caqd.log
_BackEnd_ D:caservd.log
_BackEnd_ D:cadiscovd.log
_BackEnd_ D:caauthd.log
_BackEnd_ A:BrightStor.log
caroot A:BrightStor.log
caroot D:cas_user_logs\caroot\J0001195.LOG
Administrator D:cas_user_logs\Administrator\J0001179.LOG
Administrator D:cas_user_logs\Administrator\J0001181.LOG

The real path of brightstor is:
C:\Program Files\ComputerAssociates\ARCserveand in the \LOG\cas_user_logs I have an Administrator and a caroot dir.

I edited the users file so that I all the user entries correspond with the existing logfiles. There were also entries which didn't correspond with an existings logfiles, I've deleted those entries.

what am I doing wrong?

 

[fai0001]

I can find the file BrightStor.log,
but nothing display on Activity Log windows at Job Status
what's wrong?

 

[maxpalue]

it is a kown issue. Please post your catpath env. (start -> run -> type in cmd -> type in Set)

 

[xp2002]

Hi maxpalue,

I don't know if you're replying to fai0001 or me, but mine is:
CATPATH=C:\Program Files\ComputerAssociates\ARCserve\DATABASE

thanks

 

[supermom]

Bless you! The information save me to.
Supermom

 

[grahamr]

I would like to thank everyone for participating in this discussion. I was having this same problem for about 2 weeks and could not figure it out. My backups where successful the entire time, until yesterday. There was no way to trouble shoot the problem, since the Activity log was blank...

Thank you, again!

 

[jed07]

Had same issue with job logs and activity logs disappearring after a re-boot and Dr Watson and qnc errors on starting caloggerd process. Solved by doing a cstop, rename log directory to oldlog, the doing a cstart. This forces system to create a new log directory and all its sub-directories, and problem went away. CA tech help found this solution in its database (eventually).

 

[mohamdr]

many of problems will be revolved if you apply the patch 9.01,and this one of them, what CA telling you is only a work around it is not a permanent solutions.

 

[cowitzer]

I manage to resolve the activity log problem using the workaround given by dmarton1, but my job log is still empty.

what else do I need to do? Thanks all!