Unable to expand session for restore

[vancleb]

Need some help with Arcserve. This is a duplicate that I posed on Brightstor Discussion also

This is Brightstor/Arcserve r11.1 running on NetWare 6.5 SP5, Btrieve is version 8.5 and I have applied SP1 to Arcserve in an effort to resolve this but no help.

Problem: Wen Attempting to do a restore by session, I can see sthe session but can not expand that to see the folders and files in that session (or any session for that matter)

Action:
1. Merged the tape back into the database.
2. Rename the database subdir to database.1 and copied the emptydb subdirectory to database and scanned and merged the tape again.
3. Renamed the entire Arcserve subdirectory to Arcserve.1 and re-installed Arcserve with SP1, scanned and merged the tape again.
4. Recoverd the database from the last backup.

I have an incident open with CA but they are basically little if any help because it runs on NetWare and its a Microsoft world out there.
I have seen this problem before and starting with an empty database and merging the tape usually cured the problem but not this time. I also noted with some of our other servers at remote locations, files and folders can't be seen either so this isn't an isolated incident that only happens once, it is something with the configuration or the Brighstor Product itself.
Any help greatly appriciated.

 

[vschumpy]

If you know what you want to restore just use a restore by backup media with filters. Else it could be the btrieve transaction log getting stuffed up, which means that even though you dump the DB it still doesn't clear it. There is a document on it somewhere on the CA website but I don't have it to hand.

 

[vancleb]

VSChumpy ...
Thanks for the info here also. I think BTRIEVE is the issue here and I have been checking some of the BTRIEVE settings to see if I can get this to work. I have noted the issue at more than one of our sites, all of which have similar setup (NetWare 6.5 and Brightstor r11.1)but not all of them.
I have a call opened with CA regarding this but they don't seem in too much of a hurry to call me back. They did ask for and I sent the BTI.CFG file for them to review.
Also I did restore all that I needed by restoring from tape and using filters.
I did a backup yesterday and was able to expand the sessions in restore view from that backup that had just completed but still could not expand sessions on the tape I wanted the restores from after merging it.
I still want this resolved and will post the fix here when I correct the issue.
Thnaks

 

[vschumpy]

I'm afraid as sad as it is to say, you're stuck with a problem in what is essentially an end of life OS (in its current form anyway). Ihate saying this as I have supported NetWare (or used to anyway) in some shape or form for about 14 years.

Most senior NetWare knowledge in most places support and coding has either left, retired, or cross trained to Linux/Unix and/or Java programming these days.

One thing to check is if the volume being backed up has a very high number of files (ie hundreds of thousands) in the same directory - this has been a problem in the past for ARCserve NetWare, although in 11.1 things were much improved. If this is the problem it will require work from CA to address.

Check this old doc too:

http://supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=TEC276419

Particularly section B where it mentions renaming the log directory when creating a new DB. It's a slim hope, but as you've got nothing else it may be worth trying in the meantime. Good luck!

 

[vancleb]

A. This setup has been in place (NetWare File / Print) at all our locations world wide for the last 12 years and various version from 3.11 to 6.5. and versions of Arcserve from V4.x to r11.1. Because eDir is stable we will be keeping it for another year or so until we install Micro$oft so until then it will have to do. (Note that the NetWare Kernel will be supported for another 5 years per Novell).
B. I will give the TID a shot, it could take care of it and I hope it does. Thanks for the tip.
C. CA Tech Support doesn't have a clue about NetWare either, They were all confussed on Monday and didn't get the idea that the manager I was looking at wasn't on the console screen of the server.

 

[nicolasperdrix]

Hi,
I have experienced the same problem : impossible to expand the session.
With my tape, I tried to :
- Use an empty database
- Merge my tape
But, it was still the same problem.
I managed to restore my datas using the filters.

Then, I restarted my server and I noticed that it was possible to expand the session of the recent backups.

The problem with this software now, is that I am not confident with the backup. Even if the report is correct, I will have to check the backup doing a restore....

 

[blister911]

Another thing you could try is to set a parameter in the asconfig.ini file. Restart arcserve and then run a merge on the tape. The merge will take a lot longer than what you're used to, but it may save you the trouble of having to restart the server.

Granted this is doesn't address the reason why it is occurring in the first place, but if it gives you a work-around....

Here it is:

[Device Activity Dispatcher]
MergeUsingCatFile=False


Remember to turn it to true or comment it out and restart arcserve again to reset it to normal.