"preview media request failed"

[Graeme_Welsh]

hi

has anyone seen the following error
while in 'Backup, Restore, Archive GUI' and selecting some files to restore, and then clicking on 'preview media required' button, receive the following errror
'preview media request failed : no entity was found (227)'
were using disk staging...


thanks

[Graeme_Welsh]

it also appears that data destaged from disk to tape cannot be restored,
receive the following error

12:30:26 (105.001) INF - TAR STARTED
12:30:32 (105.001) ERR - The following files/folders were not restored:
12:30:32 (105.001) INF - TAR EXITING WITH STATUS = 174
12:30:32 (105.001) INF - TAR RESTORED 0 OF 0 FILES SUCCESSFULLY
12:30:32 (105.001) INF - TAR KEPT 0 EXISTING FILES
12:30:32 (105.001) INF - TAR PARTIALLY RESTORED 0 FILES
12:30:32 (105.xxx) INF - Status = the restore failed to recover the requested files.

[Stumpr2]

Graeme,
What platform and version of NetBackup are you using?

[Graeme_Welsh]

Windows 2003, with NBU6, MP2
restores work (apart from data thats been destaged)
the 'preview media' command fails when checking for DSSU where data still resides on disk

[Stumpr2]

Graeme,
Please read this techalert

http://support.veritas.com/docs/281418

It was suppose to be fixed in MP2 but...BS

[Graeme_Welsh]

im not sure if that covers the problem i'm seeing
if using DSSU, what becomes the primary copy of your backup image? is it whats on disk, or whats on tape? does using the preview media command fail because its looking at the primary copy of a backup, which is a disk based image?
are u using disk staging, what do u see if you click on 'preview media'?

is tehre some manual trick that needs to be done, to make a restore possible from a backup thats been destaged to tape, with the original disk copy already deleted?


if i look at the catalog backups (which backup directly to tape), then the preview media works fine

[Graeme_Welsh]

oooh, this is getting messier and messier
i cant beleive Netbackup should behave like this, however
i used bpimage with the backupid to show how info about the backup job
the primary copy Netbackup beleived to tbe one on disk (this was no longer on disk), with copy # 2 being the tape copy, again used bpimage, made the tape copy primary, and ran 'preview media', received a popup stating that media blah1234 was required...
surely this isnt normal behaviour, i can only imagine that someone (not me of course), manually deleted the backup image from disk?

[Stumpr2]

The primary copy is the copy that is called upon for a restore.
The primary copy is made on the dssu as copy 1.
The migrated copy made to tape is copy 2.
Both copies exist but copy 1 will be used for restores
since it is still the primary copy.

When the dssu fills up
the copy 1 on the dssu will be expired and deleted from the dssu.
the copy 2 on the tape will be promoted to the new primary copy.
restores will still request the primary copy which now is copy 2 on the tape.

If you want to know what the primary copy of an image is then you can follow this technote:
DOCUMENTATION: What do the different entries in the "bpimagelist -l" output mean?
http://support.veritas.com/docs/193085

[Graeme_Welsh]

ok, i think i may be closer to a resolution here
preview media will fail, since it will be attempting to restore from a disk based copy of a backup image, and for whatever reason, NBU cant report on that
where i had a problem restoring (i think) may be due to the fact, that while testing various configs of our disk stagiing setup, i deleted the logical disk from, along with images that were on it.....

[Stumpr2]

Thats what we call an "Academic Exercise" in the great state of Michigan :)
sorry ....

[Graeme_Welsh]

dont speak american, so dont know that means, we call it something else in scotland (dont think its repeatable on this forum though)

[Stumpr2 · Accepted solution]

Academic Exrecise means you learned something from the event.

You learned to never delete a file from the staging unit but instead

1) place all of the images that end with a _C1_F1.ds into /tmp/file minus the _C1_F1.ds

2)
for i in `cat /tmp/file`
do
bpexpdate -d 0 -force -copy 1 -backupid $i
done

Then Netbackup will automatically remove the files from the staging unit when the image is expired.

[Graeme_Welsh]

ok, cool, running on windows, so the code will be a wee bit different....
i was unaware u could use bpexpdate to expire copy x of a backup image
quite clever
are you doing this because NBU dosent always remove images as iits supposed to?

[Stumpr2]

I built my dssu before the capability of STAGING_JOB_KB_LIMIT and MAX_STAGING_JOBS were available. I installed 5.1_MP4 and now I need to merge 3 small dssu's into one. Hence, the expiring of copy 1 to free up the dssu after the image has successfully migrated to tape.