Catalog Restore taking a very long time

[franchev]

Hello,

I was wondering if this was normal. So, I've re-build one of my company's backup system. I have the catalog file save to tape. I've done a catalog restore, it's been going for more than two days now. I checked the server, there were some data written to it, but nothing for the past day or so. Is it normal that it's taking so long? Should I close the Netbackup Catalog Recovery Wizard, it's been recovering please Wait, but never finishes?

P.S. As a test, I was able to restore an older catalog which only took two hours to restore. 

Please advise,

Thank you

[Nicolai]

Inactivity for a day is not OK - somthing is not right. You will need to re-try the operation.

Catalog restores can be slow because it contain a lot of small files.

[Mark_Solutions]

open a second admin console up on the master and see what the job actually says - they should all be showing up in activity monitor

[franchev]

Ok Thank you, I'm gonna try it again. 

[Mark_Solutions]

Did you check out activity monitor to see what was wrong?

It also logs everything during the recovery

Best to fix whatever was wrong before trying again

[franchev]

This isn't a very smooth process at all. Now I'm getting this error when I try to do the restore. If a process was unable to report the extended error status as the final job status, the job exits with status 252. (The extended error status has a number greater than 255.) 

Status 252. NBU Status: 830, EMM status: No drives are available. It's requesting for a drive that is in the library, but it still encountering problems everytime that I try the restore. Any ideas?

Thanks again.

[franchev]

So I rebooted the server, now the restore seems to be going. 

Thank you

[franchev]

Restore crashed. Question regarding this. I'm doing a restore, but it's an incremental _catalog_to_tape. It's restoring from tape, should I do the Full restore first, then do the incrementals?

[Amol_Nair]

When it comes to catalog recovery, just selecting the incremental is enough.

Netbackup is smart enough to look for the last FULL backup and restore data from the last FULL backup until the Incremental.

I hope before running the restore you have made sure the following 3 things are identical to the original environment when the catalog backup was taken.

1. hostname of the master server
2. NBU version
3. install path of NBU

[Amol_Nair]

1 quick question I missed.. Is this the primary copy that you are restoring from or a duplicate copy.?

If it is not the primary copy then you need to use the command line to initiate the restore with the"-cn <copy_number>" option.

[Marianne]

To troubleshoot Catalog restore issues, the first log we need to see is the 'Recover' log.
Path: <install-path>\VERITAS\NetBackup\Logs\user_ops\Administrator\logs\Recover######.log

[franchev]

Amol this is a primary copy. 

Now, I'm getting a new error when I try to restore. (86) media position error. 1

3:39:58 - Error bptm (pid=11777) ioctl (MTFSF) failed on media id 0003L5, drive index 0, Input/output error (bptm.c.6864)
05/06/2014 13:39:58 - Info bptm (pid=11777) EXITING with status 86 <----------
media position error  (86)

I've tried moving the tape to different position in the library, but to no success. I've ugraded the firmware on the tape library as well as the drive, but error persists. 

Any ideas on this one.

Thank you

[Amol_Nair]

This error could be due to a bad drive. If you see the same error only for drive 0 then you can manually down drive 0 and then try running the restore again... This will force netbackup to use a different drive... You can also try running a drive cleaning and then retry the restore... The input output error could be due to a bad or dirty drive or even due to a bad media...

[jim_dalton]

FSF is forward space file, so indeed as indicated this is a problem with the tape and or drive. I would be getting nervous at this point unless youve got more than one tape copy. Silly question but the drive and tape are compatible from where it was generated and where it is being read?

Jim

[Marianne]

Another possibility is that the tape could be overwritten in the meantime, resulting in correct position for expected catalog image not on the tape. Enable bptm log folder and also run 'Media contents report'.