email notification on NBU7.5.0.3 stopped working by its own

[grigori]

Hi,

email notification about zeros and non-zeros backup statuses just decided to stop working without any error on the backup servers neither client unless the following error that i got on some policies jobs' windows:
Error bpbrm cannot send mail to root on client hostname

my platform is:
Master server solaris 10 X86
most of the clients are win2008 R2

yesterday the notification were OK and I was receiving mails about successful and failed backups, for each client on the "host properties", i am selecting the "client sends mail" option and then having the administrators addresses separated by commas, the thing to note is that using the sendmail command from solaris to the administrator@company.com is working fine.

what could be the cause of this problem? i tried to restart the NBU services also i rebooted the servers thinking that some services is hanged but nothig worked for me, can anyone please tell me what to check?

[Yasuhisa_Ishika]

Have you already checked if your mail application and mail infrastructure used with nbmail.cmd have any problem? If not, check it first.

You can check nbmail.cmd by runing it in command prompt.

> cd <install_path>¥NetBackup¥bin
> nbmail.cmd <recipient> <subject> <mail_body_file> [<attachment_file>]

ex)
> echo foo bar > C:¥foo_bar.txt
> nbmail.cmd myaddress@mydomain TEST C:¥foo_bar.txt

[ddm2]

Try to add a local account and try if this works.

Did you check sendmail logs?

[grigori]

from dmesg, the only error concerning sendmail is the " unable to identify my own domain name", nothing else is shown. regarding adding local account, as i mentioned above in my mail, i tried to send mail using "sendmail" from the NBU server to adminstrator@mycompany.com and that worked fine

[grigori]

i have NBU installed on a solaris server so no nbmail.cmd to try with, instead i was working with sendmail (in solairs 10) and tried to send a test mail to my email account and that worked fine.
you mean that I have to configure clients with nbmail.cmd? I didnt see any documentaion about that in the admin guide

[Marianne]

If you use mailx on the server, can you see mails in root's inbox that indicates returned or failed emails?

Please also check mail config in NBU - I have seen email stopped working when onsite admin added email addresses. Instead of comma (,) between email addresses, he used semi-colon (;) as we normally do in Outlook. This caused email notification to stop working.

[grigori]

whenever I use mailx command I have the following message "no mail for root".

I have checked all the universal settingsfor all clients, I can confirm that all addresses are separated by commas.

thing to note is, when I try backup using "client sends mail" option on client's universal settings properties I receive the following error on the backup job window just before the job completion in activity monitor :
"Error bpbrm cannot send mail to root on client hostname"
but when I use "server sends mail", no error in the backup windows is generated; in all cases i dont have notifications even if I cancel the job (pushing to have a non-zero status while selecting "serve sends mail")

[Yasuhisa_Ishika]

From your first post: --- for each client on the "host properties", i am selecting the "client sends mail" option and then having the administrators addresses separated by commas --- "Client sends mail" option requires mail infrastructure in client side. So, for windows client, you need nbmail.cmd. Check if your nbmail.cmd works.

[grigori]

I will check that, but sorry I am really confused right now, I didn't remember that I did any configuration on the clients sides and NBU docs don't mention anything about configuring clients when you need to setup mail notification if you select the "client sends mail" option.

just to assure the following:
1- if I select "server sends mail" then i will be receiving mails about non-zeros backups, no?
2- if I select "clients snds mail" then I will be receiving mails about both successful and failed backups
? (after following what you mentioned about configuring nbmail.cmd)

[grigori]

problem has been solved without interaction, i think there was something wrong withthe SMTP server. But after all I have did the following changes, i have changed all the "client sends mail" on all clients to "server sends mail" and the good thing is that I am receiving zeros and non-zeros notifications!! while in the admin book they say that I have to select "client sends mail" if you want to receive both notificatio statuses!!

please can anybody correct me if I am wrong:
if I want to send mail notification about successful and failed backup statuses then I have to select the "client sends mail" option and then configure nbmail.cmd in my case (windows clients)
 

[Marianne]

I find this TN particularly helpful w.r.t. expected behaviour: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH64984

You will see that mismatched Client sends mail and Server sends mail  will result in NO mail being sent.