Topic: Selective restore using RestoreNow

[Paul van Dun]

Hi Everyone,

On my testserver I'm running E-Smith 6.0Beta3 and an Onstream DI-30 as my tapedrive, I think the tapedrive is working (thanks to Kelvin Lee's HowTo) because the logfiles don't give any errors.
After this I've installed Darrell May's dmc-mitel-adv-backup-restore RPM, because I've used it on 5.12 and it worked, but when using 6.0beta3 the logfiles some me this message:

Aug 14 21:49:36 testserver e-smith[2752]: Processing event: RestoreNow
Aug 14 21:49:36 testserver e-smith[2752]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/RestoreNow/S10RestoreNow
Aug 14 21:49:51 testserver e-smith[2752]: Unknown option: files
Aug 14 21:49:53 testserver e-smith[2752]: S10RestoreNow=action|Event|RestoreNow|Action|S10RestoreNow|Start|1060890576 421160|End|1060890593 280446|Elapsed|16.859286

Is there someone who can tell me what's wrong and should I just wait and see if there will be an update that is compatible with 6.0
Or is there an other more easy way to perform a selective restore ?

Looking forward to your replies.

Best regards,


Paul van Dun
The Netherlands

[Kelvin]

Hi Paul,

I suggest you give Shad Lord's Arkeia contrib a try. I have used it with the DI-30s with no problems. Doing selective restores is much easier via the Java GUI which runs from a Windows Workstation.

Frankly, I think it's time to dump flexbackup (no pun intended ).

Kelvin

[Paul van Dun]

Hi Kelvin,

Can you tell me which settings to use with the DI-30.


TIA,

Paul

[Kelvin]

Hi Paul,

Sorry, must have forgotten to tick e-mail replies when I last posted.

You should edit a couple of files :-

Add this to your tape definition file /usr/knox/arkeia/dbase/f3tape/tptypes.lst

ITEM    {
        "NAME"  "ADR30"
        "CAPACITY"      "14429"
        "THROUGHPUT"    "1000"
        "MAXUSE"        "100000"
        "SIZESEG"       "96000"
        "COMMENT"       "OnStream ADR30"
        "FORM_FACTOR" "ADR"
}
 
ITEM    {
        "NAME"  "ADR50"
        "CAPACITY"      "23895"
        "THROUGHPUT"    "2000"
        "MAXUSE"        "100000"
        "SIZESEG"       "96000"
        "COMMENT"       "OnStream ADR50"
        "FORM_FACTOR" "ADR"
}
 
ITEM    {
        "NAME"  "ADR60"
        "CAPACITY"      "28710"
        "THROUGHPUT"   "2400"
        "MAXUSE"        "100000"
        "SIZESEG"       "96000"
        "COMMENT"       "OnStream ADR2-60"
        "FORM_FACTOR" "ADR2"
}
                       
and the following to your drive type definition file /usr/knox/arkeia/dbase/f3drv/drvtypes.lst

ITEM    {
        "NAME"  "ONSTREAM_ADR"
        "FORM_FACTOR"   "ADR"
        "TIME_BEFORE_CLEAN"     "50"
}
ITEM    {
        "NAME"  "ONSTREAM_ADR2"
        "FORM_FACTOR"   "ADR2"
        "TIME_BEFORE_CLEAN"     "50"
}

Then when you configure via server manager, you will find what you need there !

Cheers !

Kelvin

[Paul van Dun]

Hi Kelvin,

Thanks for your settings this did the job, however when I use the server-manager to configure a backup at 20:30 this is the output in my logfiles.
But when I do a interactive backup in the Arkeia GUI than that will function very well even a restore can be done from tape.
But I don't see the relation between the setting in E-Smith and the GUI because I can't find any setting that are related to the backup time in the server-manager.
At this moment I'm testing on 6.0beta3 so could it be possible that it will only work with 5.x releases ?.
Can backups also be configured in the GUI or is the GUI only ment to do the restore ?

Aug 16 20:30:01 testserver /sbin/e-smith/do_backup[3148]: /home/e-smith/backups: NEW 1061058601=backup_record
Aug 16 20:30:01 testserver /sbin/e-smith/do_backup[3148]: /home/e-smith/backups: OLD 1061058601=backup_record
Aug 16 20:30:01 testserver /sbin/e-smith/do_backup[3148]: /home/e-smith/backups: NEW 1061058601=backup_record|StartEpochTime|1061058601
Aug 16 20:30:01 testserver /sbin/e-smith/do_backup[3148]: /home/e-smith/backups: OLD 1061058601=backup_record|StartEpochTime|1061058601
Aug 16 20:30:01 testserver /sbin/e-smith/do_backup[3148]: /home/e-smith/backups: NEW 1061058601=backup_record|BackupType|tape|StartEpochTime|1061058601
Aug 16 20:30:01 testserver e-smith[3154]: Processing event: pre-backup
Aug 16 20:30:01 testserver e-smith[3154]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables
Aug 16 20:30:01 testserver e-smith[3154]: S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables=action|Event|pre-backup|Action|S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables|Start|1061058601 350765|End|1061058601 433890|Elapsed|0.083125
Aug 16 20:30:01 testserver e-smith[3154]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S20mysql-dump-tables
Aug 16 20:30:02 testserver e-smith[3154]: S20mysql-dump-tables=action|Event|pre-backup|Action|S20mysql-dump-tables|Start|1061058601 434365|End|1061058602 556511|Elapsed|1.122146
Aug 16 20:30:02 testserver e-smith[3154]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S25gentle-ldap-dump
Aug 16 20:30:03 testserver e-smith[3154]: S25gentle-ldap-dump=action|Event|pre-backup|Action|S25gentle-ldap-dump|Start|1061058602 556927|End|1061058603 621236|Elapsed|1.064309
Aug 16 20:30:03 testserver e-smith[3154]: Running event handler: /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S50rewind-tape
Aug 16 20:30:16 testserver e-smith[3154]: S50rewind-tape=action|Event|pre-backup|Action|S50rewind-tape|Start|1061058603 621656|End|1061058616 980629|Elapsed|13.358973
Aug 16 20:30:17 testserver /sbin/e-smith/do_backup[3148]: /home/e-smith/backups: OLD 1061058601=backup_record|BackupType|tape|StartEpochTime|1061058601
Aug 16 20:30:17 testserver /sbin/e-smith/do_backup[3148]: /home/e-smith/backups: NEW 1061058601=backup_record|BackupType|tape|EndEpochTime|1061058616|StartEpochTime|1061058601
Aug 16 20:30:17 testserver /sbin/e-smith/do_backup[3148]: /home/e-smith/backups: OLD 1061058601=backup_record|BackupType|tape|EndEpochTime|1061058616|StartEpochTime|1061058601
Aug 16 20:30:17 testserver /sbin/e-smith/do_backup[3148]: /home/e-smith/backups: NEW 1061058601=backup_record|BackupType|tape|EndEpochTime|1061058616|Result|backup:-1|StartEpochTime|1061058601


Best regards,


Paul van Dun

[Kelvin]

Hi Paul,

>But I don't see the relation between the setting in E-Smith and the GUI because I
>can't find any setting that are related to the backup time in the server-manager.

Once Arkeia is installed, you should not use SME's Backup panel option to configure tape backups. There is a new panel called Arkeia Backup. Use that to configure your tape drive, tape type, backup dev name, and of course the backup time.

The GUI is mostly only used for doing interactive backups and restores.

Version 4.x does not have any means to schedule backups via the GUI. Frankly when using version 5.x under a stock RH 8 server, I found Arkeia's built in backup scheduling mechanism a pain to work with (very often resulting in no backups because Arkeia expects a particular tape to be in the drive and will not backup if a different tape is there). I ended up disabling all scheduled backups within Arkeia and just wrote a few scripts which uses Arkeia's command line interface for backups and scheduled the scripts using cron. Hasn't missed a beat since.

Kelvin

[Paul van Dun]

Hi Kelvin,

I'm running this Arkeia thing on 6.0 and the funny thing is that the E-Smith Scheduler fails to run and the Arkeia scheduler runs like a charm.
I Agree with you that it ask for a special tape and I've asked them to send me a PDF file of version 4.2 so that check the manual.
Maybe you can send me a example of the script you use to backup so that I can try your way of backing up.
What I basicly want is that I have 2 x 7 tapes that are to be use every next week, and one set is stored outside the location.
So I have a Monday_Even Tape, Tuesday_Even Tape, etc next week Monday_Odd Tape and these tapes are to be overwritten every next week, this is possible with Tapeware (To expensive for me as homeuser) and Flexbackup is to slow to do a selective restore.

Looking forward to your reply.

Best regards,

Paul van Dun

[Kelvin]

Hi Paul,

>I'm running this Arkeia thing on 6.0 and the funny thing is that the E-Smith
>Scheduler fails to run and the Arkeia scheduler runs like a charm.

OK. Some clarification is important here.

If running the Arkeia contrib for SME, you must not use SME's backup panel to schedule backups. You must use the Arkeia Backup panel to do so. This applies whatever version SME you install it into. Arkeia is meant to take over backup duties and if you use SME's backup panel, you will be confusing the setup as SME's backup panel does not know anything about Arkeia.

The Arkeia contrib for SME is using Arkeia 4.2. This version does not have a built in scheduler that I know of. Scheduled backups while running under SME is accomplished by custom templates which modifies the standard SME backup script (ie. /sbin/e-smith/backup) to use Arkeia instead of flexbackup and setting up a cron entry to run this backup every night.

I will try and get you my scripts. I'm fairly tied up with a couple of important projects at the moment. My scripts do not take into account any sort of "forced order". I wrote my scripts to mimic NT4's backup program (ie. as long as there is a tape in there, it will backup over it, and I don't care if the tape was today's, yesterday's or last year's !). Shad's original script in the contrib was meant to do this as well but occasionally, Arkeia still insists on a particular tape and I have not been able to work out a pattern. Most of my clients prefer it if backups were to work like NT4 and it's up to them and not Arkeia if they would put in the correct tape or not, because if they put in the wrong tape, at least a backup will take place, even if it means overwriting the tape in the drive. They all prefer this to not having a backup for the night just because Arkeia insists you have the wrong tape inside and therefore will not run that night's backup until you put in the tape it wants.

Kelvin

[Michiel Blotwijk]

Arkeia's rules for the tape order are based on:

1/ the order of the tapes in the tape pool
2/ the tape strategy (use new / complete existing)    
3/ the data validity of the tape (valid for 30 days, 2 weeks, ...)  

Because of this it can be difficult to force Arkeia to use the tapes in a particular order. The easyest way around this is to label the tapes _after_ the first back-up. Just accept the order Arkeia is dictating and after 14 days you'll have the tapes in a sequence to which Arkeia will stick.

So step-by-step:
1/ 'Recylcle' all tapes
2/ Set the tape strategy to 'use new'
3/ Set Validity to '13 days' (not 14 days...)
4/ Stuff a tape in the streamer
5/ Wait for the back-up to conclude
6/ Label the tape (Monday-Odd, tape1, whatever).

Repeat steps 4-6 every day until you've used all tapes and on the 15th day you'll see that Arkeia will only accept tape-1.

Michiel

[Kelvin]

Hi Michiel,

Sorry to say that in theory that's how it is supposed to work. In practise, it does not always work that way, no rhyme nor reason. The arkeia mailing list has many examples of users (very frustrated ones by the way ), who have come across this very situation where the tape retention etc does not work the way it should. I myself have on the odd occasion come across this behaviour and the only way to get arkeia back to any sanity is to reboot the server and start again.

That is why in some cases, I use my own scripts instead of the one that Shad put out for the contrib.

By the way, if you are sticking purely with the contrib, the question about strategy, validity, etc. does not come into play as they are predetermined by Shad's scripts when "auto creating" the new tapes.

Kelvin

[Michiel Blotwijk]

> work. In practise, it does not always work that way,

It's been working like that on our server for almost a year now. But only after I realised that I had to put the validity date to 13 days instead of 14. If you put it at 14 and your next back-up runs a bit earlier, Arkeia will tell you that that tape can't be used and screw up your carefully crafted sequence.

> That is why in some cases, I use my own scripts instead of
> the one that Shad put out for the contrib.

That's why I only use the Java GUI I really like most of Shad's contributions, but allways thought that this one took away most of the power and convenience Arkeia has to offer.

> By the way, if you are sticking purely with the contrib, the
> question about strategy, validity, etc. does not come into
> play as they are predetermined by Shad's scripts when "auto
> creating" the new tapes.

True. So just let Arkeia decide the sequence and label the tapes after the back-up.

Michiel