After migrating to 12, selection list is missing

[John__Lundell]

Upgrade was painless from 11d to 12.  However, now when I go to update existing jobs it will not show the selection list... so I can't browse a job and change the backup items selected.

Jobs run just fine.  All services are running.

Anyone know what might cause this?   I only have two options under Source: Priority & Availability and Selection List Notification.

This is running on a Windows 2008 Enterprise server.

[grw]

Hello John

I cant believe you havent had a single reply in the space of a month.

This is the first time I have tried this forum.

I am having exactly the same problem as you, but in my case it was a fresh installation of 64-bit backupexec v12 for windows servers, on 64-bit windows 2000 standard server.

Network topography:

The w2008 server is a replacement member server in a w2003 servers domain.  There was no problem with the original member server which ran veritas backupexec v9.

Symantec knowledgebase:

In the symantec knowledgebase there was a fix for exactly this problem (make sure your backupexec logon account has "logon as batch" permissions), but in our case it is not possible to do this since the "add user" button is greyed out in "local policy".

Other help:

On another help site it was suggested that the server had not joined the domain properly, so I tried rejoining the domain with the firewall off as was suggested.  This made no difference whatsoever to backupexec (but did totally screw up the sqlserver instance which was previously working, and meant yet another 1am finish).

Browsing through some of the other messages here, someone implied that they may have previously had selection list problems which were no longer a problem because "the agent must be installed", without saying which agent.

I note that for some bizarre reason, remote agent does not seem to be installed as part of v12.  It appears as a separate install option when the cd install browser starts. 

Is it possible remote agent is what is required for local selections?  

Also after browsing other messages, I am confused as to whether this forum is "moderated" (presumably involving Symantec staff), or merely user-to-user?

Have you made any progress in the last 30 days or have you had to abandon the symantec product?

This is what I will have to do if I dont get a solution soon.

Andrew.

[Ken_Putnam]

Also after browsing other messages, I am confused as to whether this forum is "moderated" (presumably involving Symantec staff), or merely user-to-user?

The forums are primarily User-to-User.  Symantec Techs answer from time as their schedules permit

Back in the Veritas days, it was indeed moderated, tho some of the Indian Sub-Continent techs seemed to just scan the post, pick out a few keywords and then post a link to a TechNote or three

I note that for some bizarre reason, remote agent does not seem to be installed as part of v12.  It appears as a separate install option when the cd install browser starts. 

Since v9 the "remote agent" is installed on the media server as part of the regular install, since all disk access is via it

I think this is to simplify local installs of the Agent on remote computers.  As long as the serials are entered and appear in the BESERNUM.XML file, you can take the CD to the remote computer and run the agent install there

As to why you can't get to the selection lists, dunno.  Back in v11, disappearing Select Lists were a "feature" of many upgrades, but I haven't heard of this for v12

[grw]

Hello Ken

Thanks for that.

I was expecting a call from symantec today but nothing materialised.

Re the remote agent, what I should have said was that in v12 remote agent appears to be an additional option requiring an additional purchase, since it appears as a seperate option in the list of installed options?

Re the selection problem with v12, I am wondering if there could be a problem with having a w2008  server as a member server of a domain where the domain controller is w2003.  Also the w2008 server is 64-bit as is the backupexec installation.

Andrew

[Ken_Putnam]

Ever since v8.0, the Remote Agent (RAWS) had been an extra cost option.  Perhaps previously you had purchased  a bundle of media server and a certain number of  RAWS?

As for backing up W2K8 from a W2K3 server, that should be no problem (I've never tried, but from the documentation I've seen, it should be OK)

[grw]

Response to your points:

No, in any given backupexec v9 installation we only ever had a license for the basic backupexec, plus extra licenses for Advanced Open File (of dubious value in that version), Exchange Agent, or SQL Server agent.

Maybe I am confusing things, because maybe the situation is confusing, but V9 has a "remote agent" service, even if there is no seperate "remote agent" option installed.  This service is the "beremote.exe" process, and "speeds up backup of remote computers".  Even though dont want to back up remote computers, nothing works if this service is stopped.

Another problem:

Incidentally, the customer also has an afternoon "go-slow" problem which has been going on for years, but we have never got to the bottom of.  Iniitially they had network drive hangup symptoms around 5pm at the local site, while running v9 on the domain server.  More recently (around the time v11 demo followed by v12 full version) there was an additional 3pm slowdown which was experienced by remote sites which log into a terminal server. 

Somebody else did some investigation and discovered part or all of the problem was due to 100% CPU usage by the BEREMOTE service. This may be a symantec problem, yet microsoft supposedly had a fix for it (microsoft kb867667).  They registered with microsoft to receive the fix in April, but have not received it.

I find it unbelievable that a service offering functionality pertaining to "remote" operations which are not desired, should cause such problems and simultaneously be impossible to disable?

The file selection problem:

As far as the original file selection problem is concerned, we are getting round it for now by copying sqlserver backup files to the domain server, and backing up to tape from there.  This is not ideal, since if the single tape drive goes down, backups for both servers go down.

 We could maybe try backing up targets on the w2008 server directly from the w2003 server, but we have never tried this.  And I'd say in this particular case It is quite likely not to work this way round, since it is not possible for the w2003 server backupexec instance to create a backuptodisk folder on the w2008 server because of authentication problems, so this method may encounter similar problems.

In the meantime, still no call from symantec, who presumably dont want to sell symantec products.