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mevaibhav's avatar
mevaibhav
Level 2
11 years ago
Solved

Find Out the Reason when Drive Goes Down

Hi All, 

I want to know that when a Tape Library goes down, does it creates a Log somewhere and where Can I find it in both Unix and Windows Environment.

 

7.5
Backup and Recovery
NetBackup
Troubleshooting
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    11 years ago

    Drives are not always DOWN'ed because of a tape drive error/failure. Bad media, HBA error, even driver issue can cause a drive to be DOWN'ed.
    Here we need the 'second hand' information logged in OS and NBU logs...

    Please do not forget to add VERBOSE entry to vm.conf on all media servers and restart NBU Device Manager (ltid). 
    Windows: <install-path>\veritas\volmgr\vm.conf
    Unix/Linux: /usr/open/volmgr/vm.conf
    This will increase Media Manager logging to system logs. 
    In Windows, exact reason for drives being DOWN'ed will be logged in Application log.
    Unix/Linux will log to syslog, e.g. /var/log/messages on Linux, /var/adm/messages on Solaris.

     

    How Symantec NetBackup determines if a tape should be frozen or the status of a tape drive should be changed to down, and how to change this behaviour http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH9748

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  • RamNagalla's avatar
    RamNagalla
    Moderator
    11 years ago

    var/log/messages --> Linux and var/adm/messages for Solaris 

    event viewer in windows has the basic info about the drive downs..

    and also read the below T/N

    http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH88076 

  • mph999's avatar
    mph999
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Another useful technote :

    http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH169477

    Many of the issues described in there can cause a drive to go down.

    It is worth noting, that perhaps the majority of drive issues are not caused by NetBackup (there are exceptions) - this is because NetBackup does not write (or read) directly to drives itself.  It passes the data to the Operating System, and it is the Operating System that makes the writes/ reads.

    Other useful logs:

    /usr/openv/netbackup/bptm

    /usr/openv/volmgr/debug/robots

    /usr/openv/volmgr/debug/tpcommad

    Also see https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/quick-guide-setting-logs-netbackup for more details about logs.

  • INT_RND's avatar
    INT_RND
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    All the aforementioned log locations are second hand information from the device. It is best to pull logs from the device itself. Each tape library has a different interface. The best ones have a web GUI you can access by putting the IP of the tape library in a web browser. Sometimes you need a vendor specific app to communicate with the library. Please consult the documentation for your tape library. You may need to engage vendor support for log analysis as some libraries do not produce human readable log files.

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Drives are not always DOWN'ed because of a tape drive error/failure. Bad media, HBA error, even driver issue can cause a drive to be DOWN'ed.
    Here we need the 'second hand' information logged in OS and NBU logs...

    Please do not forget to add VERBOSE entry to vm.conf on all media servers and restart NBU Device Manager (ltid). 
    Windows: <install-path>\veritas\volmgr\vm.conf
    Unix/Linux: /usr/open/volmgr/vm.conf
    This will increase Media Manager logging to system logs. 
    In Windows, exact reason for drives being DOWN'ed will be logged in Application log.
    Unix/Linux will log to syslog, e.g. /var/log/messages on Linux, /var/adm/messages on Solaris.

     

    How Symantec NetBackup determines if a tape should be frozen or the status of a tape drive should be changed to down, and how to change this behaviour http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH9748