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Babysitting BESR 2010 clients and issues

Jon_Sumida
Level 5

I really like the BESR 2010 product...except for one thing. It seems I have to "babysit" more clients then I would like to. By this I mean, I log on almost daily to my Management Console to make sure everything is going ok. But everytime there is a handful of clients that for whatever reasons have skipped/missed backups for several days or are stuck doing a backup. Normally I have to reboot the PCs or clear out the *.PQJ and *.PQH files and start a new base recovery point. I've been all over these forums and on search engines looking for reasons why these things are happening and there's no real concrete answers. I manage 300 PCs and doing this extra work to maintain the backups is stretching my time really thin. Is there an update with fixes coming soon? These are my main issues:

- skipped/missed backups, clients look fine (green check box in system tray icon). I can tell they missed because in the Manage Tasks, Computers view in the Console it shows last time run as several days ago

- misreporting of the "Last Run" date when you open the client. The one on my PC says my last backup ran was 42 days ago, but in my backup history it shows backups successfully completed every day

- backups hanging at 95% or even at other points. No future backups will run because they think it's stll not completed. Must reboot PCs and/or delete PQJ/PGH files


Again this happens on a handful of PCs usually and they seem to randomly happen. Different PCs, different dates, etc.  I've posted about some of these issues before and gotten nothing really except a link to this: " http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/352307.htm  "  That page might explain some of my issues, but there doesn't seem to be any progress on that. Anyone else experiencing any/all of these issues? I'm using version 9.0.1.36527
58 REPLIES 58

Markus_Koestler
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Yep, your first and second issuse also occur with me. I've opened a case for the 2nd problem and Symantec confirmed it. I hope that the upcomming BESR 2010 SP2 later this year will solve a couple of issues currently discussed here in the forum. Regarding the first issue I think I've read a post here in the form that this will be definitly fixed with SP2. Regarding your 3rd issue, we had a similar issue but our backups hung at 4%.

Jon_Sumida
Level 5

well it's good to know I'm not alone on this island :)  Nice to hear you opened a case with Symantec. They don't seem to frequent this particular forum very much in contrast to the Symantec Endpoint Protection one. I guess more money comes from that product, lol. 

I am crossing my fingers a SP2 will fix a lot of these. So when your backups hung, what did you do? Same thing I did?

criley
Moderator
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Employee Accredited

- skipped/missed backups, clients look fine (green check box in system tray icon). I can tell they missed because in the Manage Tasks, Computers view in the Console it shows last time run as several days ago

Are you checking the backup destination folder to see if backups are actually running or being skipped?

- misreporting of the "Last Run" date when you open the client. The one on my PC says my last backup ran was 42 days ago, but in my backup history it shows backups successfully completed every day

As Markus says, this is a known issue which has already been reported to our engineering team. I can't add any further detail at this point.

Jon_Sumida
Level 5
 Hi Chris, thanks for replying.

Yes, I do check the backup destination and it varies. Normally if I open the client and the Status says I've missed a backup, it's not correct. To get an accurate account of when my backups ran, I go into the Backup History and see. Those show the actual successful backup dates and they more often then not correspond to what is in the backup destination.  So like for my PC, it still says 43 days since my last backup in the status, but it's been backing up everyday according to the Backup History and the files in the backup destination. BUT, I do have some PCs that have just skipped their backups altogether for a few days (at random it seems).  

I have noticed that what gets reported in regards to last backup dates/times varies depending on what you are looking at. You can see a last backup date in the Status on the client, the Backup History, as well as on the Management Console under Computers view in Tasks and when you look at the actual backup policy. I've seen different results listed in all of these locations, it's hard to determine which one is acutally right. I've found that the Backup History locally on each client is the most accurate.

Markus_Koestler
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I've wrote a perl script that check the XML file behind the Backup History tab on the local BESR client, maybe you are interested in it ?

Jon_Sumida
Level 5

Yes, I'd like to check that out if you don't mind. How do you use it in your environment?

Markus_Koestler
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It runs as a scheduled task with a user account which has read permissions on the servers .
The file checklastbackup.txt contains the computernames of the servers (and in our case also workstations) to be checked, one per line.
What you might have to change is the first if/else structe because there I sort out whether the computer to be checked is a server (contains S in the computer name) or a workstation.

Here is the code:
<code>
             ($seconds, $minutes, $hours, $day_of_month, $month, $year,
                     $wday, $yday, $isdst) = localtime(time);
            --$day_of_month;
            ++$month;
            $year+=1900;
            $cmpdate=$month."/".$day_of_month."/".$year;



open (DATA,"checklastbackup.txt");

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    if ($_ =~ /S/) {
            $B="\\\\$_\\c\$\\winnt\\profiles\\all users\\application data\\Symantec\\Backup Exec System Recovery\\Schedule";
    }else {
            $B="\\\\$_\\c\$\\winnt\\profiles\\all users\\Anwendungsdaten\\Symantec\\Backup Exec System Recovery\\Schedule";
    }

        opendir THISDIR, "$B" or print "serious dainbramage: $! $B\n";
        @allfiles1 = readdir THISDIR;
        closedir THISDIR;

        foreach $file1 (@allfiles1) {


                next if (($file1 eq ".") || ($file1 eq "..") || (uc($file1) !~ /PQJ/ ) );

        open (FILE,"$B\\$file1") or print $!;
        @File=<FILE>;
        close (FILE);
        foreach $line (@File) {
        @personal = split(/LastBackup/, $line);
            $string=$personal[1];
            $string =~ s/\vt="7">//;
            $string =~ s/\<\///;
            $string =~ s/\x20//gm;


    }

}
</code>

Jon_Sumida
Level 5

Cool. Thanks Markus. What does the output file show you? Just the actual backup date/times that are reported to the backup history of each client?



Markus_Koestler
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It actually shows the status of the "last backup" field on the Backup Job date.

mdwhome
Level 3
Is there an actual release date for SP2? We are experiencing the same problem with the job "hanging" at 95% until the service is restarted, then it runs fine until the next hang episode.

willetin
Level 3

Facing the same issues here, I have some clients downgraded to 8.5, is a more stable release than the 9.x's up to now to my opinion.

Release date for SP2 is October 7-th (2010, devil), subject to change (Earlier? guess not. Later? please not).

Symanticus
Level 6

Yes, I also face the same problem, wondering also when the fix will be released.

Markus_Koestler
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Would you please mark this as solved ?
 

Markus_Koestler
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Would you mark it as solved please ?

Jon_Sumida
Level 5

Just want to chime in again on my original post. I'm getting new problems seemingly every week. Sigh.  This is making me work far more than I would like. New problem is PC reports it failed backup. I check event log and find this:

 

Error EC8F17B7: Cannot create recovery points for job: Backup of C:. Error E0BB0083: Unable to create incremental recovery point. Error EBAB0013: A test that safeguards the integrity of the program failed unexpectedly. CHECK failed, BitmapInternal::RunListBase<unsigned __int64>::RunListBase: d:\ComponentReleases\Base_Main\ws\Base/Dev/Bitmap/RunListBase.inl(158): mRunListCount < maxRuns. (UMI:V-281-3215-6071)

 

Doing some brief research turns up not much except that it fixes itself sometimes or rebooting might do the trick. Awesome.

 

Did SP2 come out yet? How's it going if so?

criley
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Employee Accredited

Jon,

SP2 has been delayed unfortunately. No news yet on a new release date.

For the incremental issue you mention; we have an orphan that fixes this issue - you will need to open a case with support to get a copy of the orphan.

Hope that helps.

Jon_Sumida
Level 5

Okay. What exactly is an "orphan"?

criley
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Orphan = untested patch.

Markus_Koestler
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Woud you please mark this post as solved ?