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Thomas_Anthony's avatar
Thomas_Anthony
Level 5
2 years ago

What are the .NBU files

Hello Team, 

A search of the NBU Windows client's file system after completing restores show some Windows clients have a large number of .NBU files where the date and size match the completed restores.

Attached is a sample from just one Windows client, there are 270 files, some from 2015 through today totaling 120 GB:


Q: What are these .NBU files and why are they created ?

Q: Although the .NBU files are not backed up or restored, why doesn't NBU clean up these files after restore complete ?

Thanks !

NBU 8.3.0.1 - 1 Linux Master / 2 Linux Media servers

Restoring to NBU Windows 2019 backup clients

Windows Server 2019
  • StefanosM's avatar
    StefanosM
    2 years ago

    try to open one of the files using more or notepad++
    Most of the time, you can find evidence in the first lines of a file.

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  • StefanosM's avatar
    StefanosM
    Level 6
    2 years ago

    try to open one of the files using more or notepad++
    Most of the time, you can find evidence in the first lines of a file.

  • tcsimerson's avatar
    tcsimerson
    Level 3
    2 years ago

    These are not NetBackup related file even though they bear the NBU acronym.  Doing a quick Internet search, these are associated with the Nokia PC Suite synchronization software.  These appear to be backups of someone's Nokia phone.

  • tcsimerson's avatar
    tcsimerson
    Level 3
    2 years ago

    Interesting.  I did a Google search for "file suffix .nbu" and got the following response:

    I can confirm, though, that these are not related to NetBackup.

  • Thomas_Anthony's avatar
    Thomas_Anthony
    Level 5
    2 years ago

    These files were created the same time a NBU restore was started and are the same size as the restored data. 

  • tcsimerson's avatar
    tcsimerson
    Level 3
    2 years ago

    In the scenario you describe, the person performing the restore specified to append a .nbu suffix to the restored files.  NetBackup would not do that automatically.

  • Thomas_Anthony's avatar
    Thomas_Anthony
    Level 5
    2 years ago

    So they are NBU related files... I did the recent restores and made no selection to rename any files. The selected folder and files were restored as originally named.  Yet the .NBU file exist, and not on all clients with restores.  Where would that rename option be located ?

  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    2 years ago

    Never seen Netbackup generate .NBU, not even with that file size.

    In some cases when restoring files with ACL to file systems without ACL, you get extended attribute files restored, but those files are small.

    Thomas_Anthony  Have you tried to list files in the restored backup using bplist or bpflist ? This is to establish if there is a name or file size match between the restored files and those in the backup image.

    How to list files backed up using the bplist or bpflist command

    https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.100003944

  • Thomas_Anthony's avatar
    Thomas_Anthony
    Level 5
    2 years ago

    Thank you Team for your responses and suggestions. Since the files have been deleted I cannot review the contents. The .NBU were not present in the backup images and so were not restored with the rest of the files.