NetBackup not backing up all files

What backup selection are you using?  ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES?

Initially, yes. Last night I changed it to the specific drive letters, but still no luck.

Assume this happens on a FULL backup. And on individual drives or folders. Same drives/folders/files everytime?

I would go straight to creating the <install_path>/netbackup/logs/bpbkar/ directory on the client and upping the VERBOSE level. In this log you should see more information about what has been chosen to be backed up or the work list, and if any what stuff to exclude/include.

After this I would check your clients configuration. Then check what the master server has down for that client attributes. See if anything out of the ordinary shows up there.

There is a old article that discusses using bpbkar and just dumping to a file the files it would backup. While not writing to any disk or tape device. This was for NB 4.5 however, could still work today.
You could try and recreate the command that NetBackup is using but send to null - on the client.

Here is the specific portion I mean:

This test will use just bpbkar writing to /dev/null (the bit bucket). Which eliminates the network portion of the
equation.

As far as bpdbm, he has to stop/restart NB for that to take effect... performance wise... you could run the bpbkar
to /dev/null on the Windows client to see whether the client or the network is the problem...

c:\Veritas\Netbackup\bin\bpbkar32 -nocont > NUL 2> (for Windows)

i.e. c:\Veritas\Netbackup\bin\bpbkar32 -nocont c:\ > NUL 2> temp.f

temp.f will contain all of the files that bpbkar has collected. This will grow considerably if there is a large file
system or directory structure you are testing with. PLEASE BE WARNED

Taken from eval.veritas.com/downloads/edu/instructor_articles_102002.pdf

As always have installed the latest Maintenance Pack for NB 6.0 or Update for NB 6.5

Are you missing files in Full backup, or differential/incremental backup?

If it's the later, I'd suggest to check how NBU determined a file should be backed up or skip.  In other words, how does NetBackup determine that a file has been changed since last backup.

Open the Windows client's "Backup, Archive, and Restore" window, check the NetBackup Client Properties and see if you have "Perform incremental based on archive bit" selected (by default) or deselected.  Check this option if it was deselected.

Another consideration is about the files that missed backup - if you copied files from another computer, the new files retain the date timestamp of the originals. If the original date was before the last backup date on this client, the new files are not backed up until the next full backup.

Great post Stuart.

Let me add that the touch file bpbkar_path_tr will add even more information (like the processing of exclude files) to the bpbkar debug logfile.

How to set bpkar_path_tr : support.veritas.com/docs/267292


Regards

Nicolai

Stuart, great post. I will try all that today and update as I learn more.

As for the other questions, I do a daily incremental and a weekly full...I'm missing files from both.

Are you sure that the files were supposed to be backed up on the daily job?
Usually, if they do not get changed between runs, an incremental will not back them up (depending on what type of incremental you're using).

Also, I just discovered something similar on one of my clients (the incremental wasn't backing up files that had changed that day).
Check the Host Properties for the client, under Windows Client, Client Settings.
The section for Incrementals tells NBU how to tell if a file needs to be backed up.

In my case, I had enabled 'Use Change Journal in Incrementals' and discovered that that was what was preventing my backups from being correct.

$0.02

If they haven't changed, they should still show up in the list when i go to restore them...

Have you checked permissions to make sure that the account you're using to run NBU has rights to the files/folders you're missing?  I had this same problem, and account permissions ended up being the culprit.

Well, bad news.

The increased logging told me nothing...infact, the skipped folders weren't even listed in the logging.

Dglee, I just switched the account it's using...I'll post the results later.