Restoring Files that were archived by EV

[Gilly-Bhoy]

Hi All,

Forgive my poor understanding of EV before I start.
We restored some files from a drive that is protected by EV 7.5 for FSA.
The files came back with the expected file sizes etc but they have an "O" file attribute and when they are opened they have little squares instead of text.
The icons for these files in Windows Explorer have a little clock attached to them also.

What am I missing here? Are these files just refrences to files that have been removed by EV?

Any help is much appreciated!

Thanks,
Gilly

[Frank_Beck]

Hi Gilly,

Are you sure that the application you used to back up these files is compatible with Enterprise Vault?

After you open these files, do they still have the offline attribute set?

The "clock" icon you see is not an Enterprise Vault icon - this is the way windows displays offline files - so these files may not actually be Enterprise Vault Placeholders any more

If you run the following from the command prompt, what is returned:

fsutil reparsepoint query <filename>

(So for example - fsutil reparsepoint query c:\offlinefile.txt)

Thanks,

Frank

[Gilly-Bhoy]

Hi Frank.

Sorry should have said. It's BE 11d.

Yes after opening a file the "O" attribute still remains.
I will run that query and post the results.

Thanks

[Gilly-Bhoy]

Hi Frank,

I ran that command against a file that had the "O" attribute and the following came back:
Error: The file or directory is not a reparse point

Any idea what this means?
I am totally stuck here.
If I restore the "pointers" to the archived files like I have here shouldn't it still retrieve the files when I double click on them?

Thanks,
Gilly

[Maverik]

Unfortuntaly this means that the placeholder is corrupt.

Usually if you are restoring to the same location etc this is not an issue and usually is only an issue when for example you restore to a new server lets say if you have replaced the old one.

Reason for it is simply an issue of restoring the reparsepoint information to the file, the alternate data stream information.  This was an issue, in 11 and previous version though I think from tests carried out was OK in 12.

The technote below is alos worth noting as it is pretty much your issue even if not a redirected restore.

http://support.veritas.com/docs/289819

So the next question is how to fix this if you cannot restore from backup.

The onlky way would really be using FSAUtility to recreate the placeholders. You will find details on this in the Utilities guide under documentation for Enterprise Vault on the support pages.

[Gilly-Bhoy]

Thanks Don.

I tried running the following command to see what it would report back:
FSAUtility -c -s "\\servername\G$" -1 0 -r

It returned this error:
Error: Invalid user switch for -c (Recreate placeholders for archived files) option.

Any idea what this means?

Thanks,
Gilly

[Maverik]

MMMMM.. That should not be happening. 

Only cause I can think of is that the root folder is being targeted .  There are somne issues targeting the root folder.  can you try targeting a sub-folder and what occurs?  There is one other thing that   I have thought of as it were.  In version 7.5 there is no -f switch, which is a force switch that exists in Ev8.  You need to ensure that the corrupt placeholders are therefore deleted before you recreate them, or unfortunatly get an upgrade to EV8 and use the -f switch which will force an overwrite of corrupt placeholders. 

With regards this issue of the -c switch, if it still fails targeting sub-folder can you get a dtrace of fsautility and post it?

Please follow the instructions in the technote below in order to obtain a Dtrace.  Ensure you replicate the issue whilst the Dtrace is running in order for the issue to be logged.

http://support.veritas.com/docs/276120         

Please Dtrace the following:
FSAUtility

[Paul_Grimshaw]

Don't know if it is the formatting but it looks to me like it is a 1 you have used instead of the letter l for log. Replace 1 with l and do you get the same?

[Paul_Grimshaw]

Don't know if it is the formatting but it looks to me like it is a 1 you have used instead of the letter l for log. Replace 1 with l and do you get the same?

[Gilly-Bhoy]

Aghhhh!! I shoulda gone to specsavers! I had a 1 instead of a l.
What an idiot!

Running command at present! Will post results shortly. Thanks for all the help so far!

Gilly

[Gilly-Bhoy]

I am running that command in report mode and it's still running!
The text file it's generating is 18Mb and growing.
The drive I am running it against is 350GB with about 250GB used space.
This could take a while eh?
:-(

[Gilly-Bhoy]

Ok so I have my report! It's 80Mb.
Now it appears to have two types of entry:
Recreated placeholder for: <path>
and
Will not process file <path>

In the case of "will not process file" is this something to worry about or is it to be expected?
I just want to make sure I know what's going on before I run this for real!

Cheers
Gilly

[Maverik]

Basically it means that it will not recreate the placeholder.  Does the placeholder currently exist in corrupt form? As I mentioned previously it will not overwrite existing corrupt placeholders.  A force option is only available in version 8.

Sorru I did not spot the 1 and l thing ;)

Nice one Paul.

[Gilly-Bhoy]

Sure I should have spotted it! What an idiot!

Ok so if we can't force overwrite the placeholders then where are we?

An awful lot of them have "Will not process file" in the log!

I think it might be time I called Support about all this!?

Gilly

[Maverik]

The only option to force is upgrade your version of EV unfortunatley. 

I suspect support will tell you this same.

You may want to check that it is because a file already exists. i.e. remove one, then run again in report mode, does the report now say it will process this file sucessfully? If so then this is the reason why. If not then it will be another issue.