Problems backing up GW 6.5 1

[LawnBoy]

Running GW 6.5 SP1 on NW 6.5 SP2. I have a Backup Exec 9.1 SP3 media server running on NW 6.5 SP4.

The GW server has tsafs and gwtsa running, as well as the BE remote agent and the BE Open File Option (which is written by St Bernard I'm told).

There are 5 files that are being skipped as in use (and they really are being skipped). On the PO it's skipping 1 .idx and 1 .inc in \ofuser\index\* (all other .idx and .inc files are being backed up). On the DOM in \wpgate\async\000.prc\* it's skipping the current log, STAT, and PROC (which is of zero length).

I know gwtsa is working because without it BE doesn't see GW as an object. Besides, wphost.db and wpdomain.db are being backed up. I know the BE OFO is working because I dropped a spreadsheet in the directory, opened it, and backed it up.

It's possible that the .idx and .inc are corrupt, but I can't seem to find out what they do and who they belong to from the GW docs.

I tried turning off the BE OFO to see if it was interfering with gwtsa but got the same results.

Can someone buy me a clue? I've been over the configs a hundred times and I'm just not finding the problem. And if I've gotta make a trouble call, do I call Novell or Veritas?

5 stinking files.

 

[terry712]

can you back the files up at a file level rather then a gw level

imagine with those versions novell will say update and veritas are useless at netware questions

 

[LawnBoy]

Yes, they do backup as flat files. I guess I can do this until I get all the SP's current. What a pain.

 

[LawnBoy]

In fact, I just got a complete backup of the entire domain as flat files. Know of any problems doing it this way, without gwtsa or the gw switch on tsafs?

 

[gioffre]

Hi,

A few items to discuss here:

1) In general I try to stay away from running the generic (St Bernard) Open File Agent as it is notorious for causing server abends. If your server is stable then that is fine.

2) For best performance, you should eventually look at backing up your GroupWise system with the GW open file functionality built in to current versions of TSAFS. There is no need for GWTSA and TSAFS is much faster. You are also likely to get more stable releases as TSAFS is constantly patched and upgraded while GWTSA only gets updated with GroupWise support packs.

3) The situation you outlined is not an issue at all. The files in user\index are only index files which will be rebuilt by the QuickFinder process anyway. The files in wpgate/async are completely useless if you do not have an ASYNC gateway installed. If you do run an ASYNC gateway, it will simply create those files when you start it up.

Gioffre Consulting

http://www.gioffre.com

Check out our Novell Training Cruises

 

[LawnBoy]

(1) So far I've had no trouble with the OFO.
(2) I'm going to try that, but I'd like to get my servers backed up before I apply SP4. SP2 doesn't include that functionality, so I'm caught between a rock and a hard place.
(3) Thanks for the info. I had assumed that about the ASYNC files, it's good to hear confirmation. I am running that gateway.

As an update:
I've run into some bizarre problems trying to restore the flat file backups of GW made with the BE OFO. I've seen SCSI bus resets, extraordinarily slow restores (1-2 Mb/min),
and restore jobs that just suspend processing randomly.

This only happens with the GW backups, redirected or not. Backups from my fileserver (same SP, done at the same time with the same job) restore anywhere flawlessly.

I have discovered that my GW backups do restore properly to a server running SP4. So I'm going to shut down the domain and PO, do a simple file copy of the entire domain structure, and slap SP4 on the box.

At which point I will repeat all these tests again. And again. I'm not sure I'll ever feel comfortable about the GW backups, though. It may be time to cluster that box.