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Flexbackup wierdy!!

Offline edform

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Flexbackup wierdy!!
« on: November 30, 2004, 11:19:04 AM »
One of my servers has begun to return failure messages from every backup run which I've never seen before and for which I can't find any details on the web. Has anyone seen this before?

From: Cron Daemon <root@fredbloggs.co.uk>
To: <root@fredblogs.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 11:00 PM
Subject: Cron <root@e-smith-server> /sbin/e-smith/do_backup

>> Backup terminated: pre-backup failed - status: 256

Ed Form

Offline tdbsoft

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Re: Flexbackup wierdy!!
« Reply #1 on: November 30, 2004, 02:08:33 PM »
Quote from: "edform"
One of my servers has begun to return failure messages from every backup run which I've never seen before and for which I can't find any details on the web. Has anyone seen this before?

From: Cron Daemon <root@fredbloggs.co.uk>
To: <root@fredblogs.co.uk>
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 11:00 PM
Subject: Cron <root@e-smith-server> /sbin/e-smith/do_backup

>> Backup terminated: pre-backup failed - status: 256

Ed Form


What type of tape drive are you using.

Check the tape and try using a different tape, the QIC tapes do go bad from time to time.  Also the Seagate QIC tape drives have a drive belt on the top that can break or expand so that the tape will rotate.

TDB

Offline edform

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Re: Flexbackup wierdy!!
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2004, 04:22:57 PM »
What type of tape drive are you using.

Check the tape and try using a different tape, the QIC tapes do go bad from time to time.  Also the Seagate QIC tape drives have a drive belt on the top that can break or expand so that the tape will rotate.

This is an HP DAT24 in perfect order with tapes that right perfectly on my own DAT24 autochanger.

The big mystery here is that the backup never actually begins...

>> Backup terminated: pre-backup failed - status: 256

Ed Form

Offline tdbsoft

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Re: Flexbackup wierdy!!
« Reply #3 on: December 01, 2004, 03:04:48 AM »
Quote from: "edform"
What type of tape drive are you using.

Check the tape and try using a different tape, the QIC tapes do go bad from time to time.  Also the Seagate QIC tape drives have a drive belt on the top that can break or expand so that the tape will rotate.

This is an HP DAT24 in perfect order with tapes that right perfectly on my own DAT24 autochanger.

The big mystery here is that the backup never actually begins...

>> Backup terminated: pre-backup failed - status: 256

Ed Form


Have no experience with Dat tapes or Drives, but when I have seen this message in the past it is usually a hardware type error.  Perhaps check your cabling and terminator pack and/or try the drive in a windoze PC and see if it is working.

TDB

Offline ldkeen

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Flexbackup wierdy!!
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2004, 10:48:13 AM »
Ed,
Is it a scsi tape drive? If so do an lsmod and make sure the module is still loaded - maybe unload and it reload to make sure. Check dmesg after doing so to make sure the drive is detected. What is the output of:
#/bin/mt -f /dev/nst0 status
Maybe it's time to run a cleaning tape through the drive? Just some suggestions.
Lloyd

Offline edform

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Re: Flexbackup wierdy!!
« Reply #5 on: December 02, 2004, 09:10:55 AM »
Quote from: "ldkeen"
Ed,
Is it a scsi tape drive? If so do an lsmod and make sure the module is still loaded - maybe unload and it reload to make sure. Check dmesg after doing so to make sure the drive is detected. What is the output of:
#/bin/mt -f /dev/nst0 status
Maybe it's time to run a cleaning tape through the drive? Just some suggestions.


Hi Lloyd et al

I loaded the trial version of Microlite BackupEdge onto the server yesterday and turned off the built-in tape backup. I just saw the report this morning and it worked perfectly; so the tape system is plainly working perfectly.

This is turning into a real mystery. I've searched everywhere for th identity of the error 256 that flexbackup puts up and there doesn't seem to be anything out there.

When I checked Lloyd's suggestions yesterday, I noticed a long list of suspicious stuff in the dmesg log, but I can't see how that might be significant. I'm going to start another thread to ask about this, but just in case it's the magic explanation - the suspicious lines are...

denylog: IN=eth1 OUT=MAC=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx SRC=80.239.201.17 DST=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx LEN=60 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=61 ID=0 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=80 DPT=47923 WINDOW=5792 RES=0x00 ACK SYN URGP=0

There are loads of similar lines with groups of SRC addresses with the same initial pair of IP triplets and varying final pairs. each group is followed by lines of the form...

divert not allocating divert_blk for non-ethernet device ppp0
divert: no divert_blk to free, ppp0 not ethernet

I assume this is some sort of repeated attempt to get into the system; but the main point is it doesn't look as though it could affect backups.

Any ideas?

Ed Form

Offline slicknic

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Flexbackup wierdy!!
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2004, 04:50:53 PM »
> Backup terminated: pre-backup failed - status: 256

I also use a DAT 24 and usually get this message if there is no tape in the drive. Is the tape sensor in the drive working properly.

Nick
...
Oasis Driving School - Bristol
www.oasisdriving.co.uk

Offline edform

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Flexbackup wierdy!!
« Reply #7 on: December 04, 2004, 12:12:56 AM »
Quote from: "slicknic"
> Backup terminated: pre-backup failed - status: 256
I also use a DAT 24 and usually get this message if there is no tape in the drive. Is the tape sensor in the drive working properly.


I'll check this out - although the fact that BackupEdge works perfectly suggests that it must be ok.

Thanks for the tip.

Ed Form

Offline FreakWent

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Flexbackup wierdy!!
« Reply #8 on: September 09, 2006, 03:21:11 AM »
OK, I don't think that this is a backup error.

try

nano /sbin/e-smith/do_backup

In here we see

if ($status = system(qw(signal-event pre-backup tape)))
{
    exit bad_exit($backup_rec, "pre-backup", $status);
}

so, try

locate pre-backup

/etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup
/etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S20mysql-dump-tables
/etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables
/etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S50rewind-tape


COOL!  So now try and run each of these scripts as root:

sudo /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S20mysql-dump-tables
sudo /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S10mysql-delete-dumped-tables
sudo /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S50rewind-tape

and see if any fail.  If they do, you've found the cause of the problem.  In my case, I get

# /etc/e-smith/events/pre-backup/S20mysql-dump-tables

/usr/bin/mysqldump: Got error: 1045: Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost' (using password: YES) when trying to connect

So I know the problem is with mysql. In my case, I know I stuffed mysql a month ago but I don't know how to fix that, so I'm going to remove that command and cross my fingers.  Of course, if you're doing this on a server you regard as important, you should find out how to fix your problem, rather than ignoring it.

I will probably do this one day (ie I will not, I will ignore this until the next rebuild) but then I have bad priorities.

 :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:  :pint:

uuuurrrrhhhhh..................

See?

Offline edform

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Flexbackup wierdy!!
« Reply #9 on: September 09, 2006, 02:48:53 PM »
Quote
OK, I don't think that this is a backup error.

try

nano /sbin/e-smith/do_backup

In here we see

if ($status = system(qw(signal-event pre...


Thanks FreakWent

I'll take a look at this. I solved the problem by buying and using Microlite BackupEdge, but I'll see what I get with your command set.

Ed Form