large and repetitive incremental backups 1

[ravashaak]

I have a problem on two of my Windows clients (both XP Pro) where the d:\ partition on each system backs up pretty much everything on every incremental backup. I haven't had that much of an opportunity to troubleshoot this because the systems aren't very available (both belong to a somewhat uncooperative head honcho type).

As of yesterday, I finally had a chance to do a little looking. I searched for anything recently added to these systems. However, since (in the case of these two systems) I am not the sole admin, I can't say with certaintly what was installed and when.

I've reinstalled the networker client (6.13), performed an nsrck -L6 for both clients, and checked for media database corruption. All these efforts haven't resulted in zero progress. The backups are of pretty much the exact same size every day. The backups running on these problem partitions are indeed incremental backups (I've verified).

One thing that has been recently added is wincvs. I'm not that knowledgeable concerning cvs stuff, but it does seem to fit the loose suspect profile. Perhaps it is altering some creation or modification attribute, causing the fielsystems in question to appear altered between each backup? Perhaps it is something else entirely.

If anyone has any ideas of potential causes, additional troubleshooting techniques, etc for this problem, please let me know.

server = solaris 8 and networker 6.12
clients = win xp pro and networker 6.13

 

[DavinaTreiber]

NW 6.1.3 does not support Windows XP. You need 6.2 or 7.X.

 

[ravashaak]

Thanks, but that's not the actual cause of the issue.

 

[DavinaTreiber]

How do you know it's not the cause? If you're running an unsupported combination then all bets are off. For all you know there might be (for example) some difference in the implementation of NTFS that affects this.

 

[Chapter11]

I would be more concerned with using a higher client level than server level. I'm still running 6.0.3, on 2000 and soon 2003 servers.

 

[devfsadm]

On the Windows clients check or set the system environment variable NSR_AVOID_ARCHIVE
and set it with a value of yes.Then reboot the clients.
What I have seen is the backups are the same size over and over again on the incrementals when viewed on the indexes gui.
Below is a link to an explaination of what happens:

http://www.backupcentral.com/foms/networker-serve/cache/72.html

I hope this helps.

 

[ravashaak]

Ok...

It's ok to run a 6.13 client with 6.12 server according to Legato's phone support (I asked about this in the past btw).

I've also identified the general culprit of this issue (although I have yet to pinpoint the specific cause). The culprit is wincvs.

Both of these problem clients use cvs. I'd already had cvs at the top of my list of suspects, I just had no evidence to back it up (it fit the profile). Following that hunch, I asked around and found another person using cvs on their windows client here. As it turns out, the partition they use for cvs data is also exhibiting this behavior. Although the evidence is circumstantial, it's enough for me.

I guess I need to read up on wincvs and cvs in general. Since I did not do the wincvs installs myself, I am not sure of the configuration used on these systems. It could be a simple matter of misconfiguration. I'm not aware of any special procedures needed when backing up windows clients that participate in cvs activities (but it's possible they exist).

 

[ravashaak]

devfsadm,

I've run across that article before. It may hold some potential in resolving this issue. I've set the NSR_AVOID_ARCHIVE variable to a value of YES (on one of the problem systems). Over the next couple of days I will observe the backup behavior of this client and post the results.

Thank you for the tip.

 

[wallace88]

If you set the environmental variable NSR_AVOID_ARCHIVE to yes, remember to reboot the system. This will only work if the archive bit on the files is being set by some process running on that system.

As an alternative, you may want to use the Windows's change journal. In the NetWorker's start group, there should be a icon that refers to the change journal. After opening that, select a disk, and then enable the change journal for that disk. Repeat for any other disk. For the first parameter... put it to the maximun of 2%, the other you can use the default.

Sorry for the sketchy details... I don't remember the exact step by step method to enable the change journal, but that should be it.


Once you activate the change journal, monitor the backups and see whether it helps. Of course, knowing what wincvs actually does to the files would make your life easier too.

 

[ravashaak]

devfsadm,

Well, setting the NSR_AVOID_ARCHIVE environment variable to YES seems to have done the trick. Backups for these problem systems now appear completely normal. Thnaks for pointing me in the right direction.