Need help making a backup job with bemcmd

[Ken_N]

Hi!  I am trying to back up a plethora of files with bemcmd.  My script that scans for non-archived files returns a path and filename.  I tried to run it using the following script first:

[General]
JOB_TYPE=Backup
JOB_NAME="Backup A01"
SERVER=
USERNAME=
PASSWORD=
JOB_PRIORITY=HIGHEST

[Backup_Options]
BK_METHOD=0
DEVICE_NAME=CERTANCE 1
OPEN_FILES_METHOD=2
RETENSION_MEDIA=NO
PRESERVE_TREE_ON_ARCHIVE=YES
SINGLE_INSTANCE_FOR_NTFS=YES

[Media_Options]
MEDIA_NAME=LTO000032
APPEND=no
APPEND_NO_OVERWRITE=YES
VERIFY=NO
COMPRESSION_TYPE=2
CHECKSUM=YES
EJECT_MEDIA=NO

[Miscellaneous]
PRINT_LOG_FILE=NO

[Selections]
PATH1=D:\Array\Path1\file1.exe
INCLUDE1=YES
SUBDIRS1=YES
PATH2=D:\Array\Path2\file1.exe
INCLUDE2=YES
SUBDIRS2=YES

...and so on and so forth.  When I run it, I get returned -1.  I found that it doesn't like my selections.  When I ran the script, it generated 879 items.  When I trim it down to like 10 or so, the backup runs fine.

So I'm assuming you can't have that many selections in the script.  I read that there is a -o220 for creating selection lists, but I can't seem to find good info on it.  Can someone please shed light into what I should be doing to make this work?

Thanks alot!

[Ken_Putnam]

Are you on the latest service pack?

Early in v11d there was a problem with Selection Lists over 128 entries.  There was a Hot Fix (don't rememeber which one, sorry) but IIRC SP1 rolled it in, so any later Service Pack should include it

[Ken_N]

Yes, SP2 revision 7170. 

I tried calling Symantec tech support, we tried a bunch of stuff (looking for invalid characters and such in my filenames) and we ended up reordering the paths so it's PATH1 to PATH7 then it restarts at PATH1 for my 879 files in the selection section.  It seemed to work, so I hung up but it turns out that it only backed up the first 7.  Doh!

So I'm waiting on a call back, but hoping in the interim that someone may have seen this issue already.

[Ken_N]

Just wanted to write a followup in case anyone else is having this issue.  I've found through trial and error that if I keep my selection lists to 450 or less files, it works fine.  So I've modified my script to break at 450 and create new job files for the subsequent files, so if I have a job of 1000 files it creates 2 450 file jobs and a 100 file job.  Fires them all off at once so it starts working on one and the other two get queued.  Works great.

Haven't heard from Symantec, no call back so I'll just live with this solution.