Topic: A system restore is in progress. It began at:Tue Apr 29 03:4

[Kristian Gronevet]

I had some serious problem with my server.. and after trying almost everything.. I just ran an old backup I had done some days before the problems started on my server.. without reinstalling the whole distro.. I just smacked the old backup on top of the old @!#$.. and amazingly... IT WORKED!!

and now Ive gotten almost everything working again.. except.. one thing.. and that is that I cant backup anymore.. the system says that there is a backup-restore in progress..

A system restore is in progress. It began at:Tue Apr 29 03:44:33 2003.

how can I fix this?

[Ray Mitchell]

Restore can take a long time (many hours), but 6 days seems a bit much.

My guess is that you may have stopped the process before it actually finshed (as you couldn't wait any longer and what the heck it much be finished by now) and that's why you are now getting those messages.

What type of backup/restore were you using
1) backup to desktop
2) backup to tape
or something else like
3) backup2ws

If restore from 1 or 2
did you actually receive a message in the server manager saying that the restore process was complete ?

You may need to run the restore again and this time wait for it to finish completely.

Let us know
Regards
Ray

[Jon Blakely]

Kristian,

Try this. From command line

# /sbin/e-smith/db configuration setprop restore state idle

Jon

[Kristian Groenevet]

Hi Ray, I thought the restore had went just fine.. the server has been fully operative the last 5-6 days.. and it was just when I thought about doing a back-up I realized this problem..

I did a restore from desktop..

everything on the server works fine now.. I just want to be able to backup my server again!

[Kristian Groenevet]

Hi Jon, I tried that command... and it didnt help with my problem..

any other ideas?

best regards, Kristian

[Ray Mitchell]

Kristian Groenevet wrote:
>
> Hi Ray, I thought the restore had went just fine..

"Just fine" maybe.
Sorry to be pedantic, but did you actually receive a message saying that the restore was complete ?

Ray

[Kristian Groenevet]

No I did not.

[Ray Mitchell]

Kristian
Well, you should receive a message at the end which says the restore is complete, the fact that you did not suggests the restore did not fully complete and finish the reconfiguration of the server. Perhaps all the files are there or appear to be there but other system events did not finish, therefore the message you see now.

I have seen this myself when waiting for the restore to finish, and restarting the server before I received a finished message, thinking that the restore must have finished by now !! As I said it can tale many hours to complete.

I suggest you try running the "Configure this server" option from the server console, you may need to change one setting in order for the config to be saved, then repeat the process and change the setting back to what it should be.

I think this command does the same thing

/sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event reboot

Let us know how this goes
Regards
Ray

[Kristian Groenevet]

Hi, I tried this now.. and it went fine.. but it still did help..

Backup configuration and status
Tape backups are disabled

A system restore is in progress. It began at:Tue Apr 29 03:44:33 2003.


this is still what it says in Server-manager -> administration -> Backup or restore ..

Ive rebooted the machine several times since the restoration.. there must be some way to just terminate that "restore progression" ?


best regards,
kristian

[Ray Mitchell]

The other thing I also tried was to reinstal the sme operating system, select the upgrade option rather than a clean instal, and just instal over the top of your existing instal.
This may "fix" the settings that you are having trouble with.
You may need to reapply any updates though.

I am not sure of the correctness of the above procedure but it did work for me using an earlier version (5.5 I think).

Let us know the result
Regards
Ray

[Ray Mitchell]

Kristian
Some follow up on this.
I was playing around testing the restore process on a v5.6U4 server and would like to share my findings with you and others.
After a restore from desktop you should get a message as per server manager instruction:
"Restore in progress
After the restore completes you must reboot the server. Your restore is complete when /etc/smbpasswd has been restored and the words "Restore complete" appear at the bottom of your screen."

OK, I did a backup to desktop successfully and Verified the file as being OK. Note it was a backup of a basic configuration with 3 users, 1 ibay with 10 small files in it, backup files size 31.5Mb), which only took a few minutes to actually backup.

I then did a restore from desktop, so I  wait and wait and wait, for 15 hours, with a list of files restored displayed (the last being /etc/smbpasswd), but no "Restore complete" words at the end. Close server manger, open server manager again, look at Backup or restore panel, and see the words

"Backup configuration and status
Tape backups are disabled
A system restore is in progress. It began at:Fri May 9 21:27:02 2003.
Select an action:  Refresh this display
                          Configure tape backup"

No other choices available to create a new desktop backup or restore.
Refresh did nothing except display the same thing.

Next step shutdown and restart server.

After boot up finished, a message displays saying,

"Inconsistent server state (or similar) Continue Yes
Next screen shutdown now  Yes No"
Selecting Yes just shuts down the server and the same thing happens upon reboot.
Select No and the server console is displayed with a red message at the top saying that the server is not configured correctly.

Then I ran Configure this server (changed one setting) saved at the end, and then rebooted.

After reboot server started up OK with no error messages.
Checked server manager Backup or restore panel, and it now appears normal, the message about "A system restore is in progress" is no longer there.
I can select to do another backup or restore OK now.

The settings in the restore file were different to those on the server I was restoring to (ie I changed a few settings in between the backup and the restore), I have checked the server settings now and all the restored values are correct, so it does appear that the data was correctly restored to the server, just that the restore process seems to have froze, or it needs more than 15 hours to complete !!
When I shut down the server without the "restore complete" message appearing, the server then went into an inconsistent state and needed to be Reconfigured to fix it up.

I might try the restore again and wait even longer than 15 hours to see if it completes correctly.

Hope this helps someone else who may run into this issue.
Regards
Ray Mitchell

[chanchong]

Hi,

What is the status now? Is there a solution to this? I have gotten this message also. There is no way I can solve it. Any soultions will be greatly aprreciated.

Thanks

[Kristian Groenevet]

Hi, I tried the last steps suggested by Ray Mitchell, and it didnt work.. so Ive decided to just reinstall everything.. its a dirty job.. but it seems I gotta do it.

Im saving the job for a rainy day.

[ChanChong]

Hi Kristian,

So if I am not wrong, you meant to say that you have done nothing except to reinstall everything from scratch and not restore anything from the previous backup.

If thats the case, you think I can say that there is a bug in the software?

[Ray Mitchell]

Sorry, apart from my suggestions. I'm out of ideas on how to fix the issue once it has occurred other than a reinstal
BUT
you might want to try using a different web browser than Internet Explorer. Apparently some (many ?) versions of IE do not handle the large files involved with backup and restores in a consistent manner. I had problems with IE 5.5 SP2 but interestingly v5.00 seemed to work better doing some things.
ie Verify the desktop backup would not work consistently using IE5.5SP2 but was OK using IE5.00 and Netscape 6.02.

I reported some of these issues in detail to Mitel bugs, and their suggestion is to use another browser, try Netscape 6.02 instead, it seems to behave without problems.

Hope this helps someone.

Regards
Ray Mitchell

[ChanChong]

Ok. Just for info sake, I was using IE 6.

To reinstall, its really a pain. Its really tough to do those things on a production server. Sigh. I think I can just give up using 5.6.

Anyhow, thanks for all the feedback.

[Ray Mitchell]

The problem is not with sme v5.6 the problem is with Microsoft and Internet Explorer amd how it handles large files

If you have a production server that is stuffed up, then instal Netscape 6.02 on a workstation and try running the restore from desktop again, that way the restore process may complete fully, with the "restore complete" message and after a reboot your server will be OK.

Ray

[ChanChong]

Just for update again. It didn't work. Tried using opera also. But it still didn't work out.

Now who's fault is it now?

[Ray Mitchell]

ChanChong

Did you do a fresh instal of sme OS before doing the restore again ?

Ray

[ChanChong]

sure did. on all occasions, be it netscape, opera.

seems like the only rather reliable way is to actually upgrade the server from using the 5.6 disc. system configurations are there, but some of the databases are missing.

you still reckon its a microsoft problem? could it be a bug somewhere?

if the restore is performed using a 5.5 fresh install, nothing goes wrong. could it be that sme 5.6 dont support 5.5 backup?

[Ray Mitchell]

Well if you are restoring a v5.5 backup to a v5.6 server then it is possible you may have problems.

From what I have read it may be better to do a fresh instal of v5.5 and then restore the v5.5 backup to the v5.5 server, and after restore has completed OK, then do an upgrade instal of the v5.6 OS software.

Ray

[ChanChong]

that seems like the only resort. but as i mentioned, some databases are lost.

anyhow, thanks for all the help!

[Ray Mitchell]

Why should they (databases) be lost, aren't they in the original backup you did ?

Ray

[ChanChong]

that, i am not too sure. but the databases sure are gone.

the ibays are there, but the databases are gone.

[Charlie]

Ray Mitchell wrote:
 
> From what I have read it may be better to do a fresh instal
> of v5.5 and then restore the v5.5 backup to the v5.5 server,
> and after restore has completed OK, then do an upgrade instal
> of the v5.6 OS software.

I know of no reason that that would be better (and it's more work). A 5.5 backup should restore onto a 5.6 system with no problems.

Charlie

[Tim]

Charlie I had the same problem. The only way I resolved it was to restore to 5.5 also then the upgrade. I tried everything and hunted the forum for about a week. Maybe it's something in newer MB's?

Tim

[Charlie Brady]

Tim wrote:
 
> Charlie I had the same problem. The only way I resolved it
> was to restore to 5.5 also then the upgrade. I tried
> everything and hunted the forum for about a week.

You (apparently) found a bug, but you didn't report it to smebugs@mitel.com - so you didn't try everything.

Charlie

[ChanChong]

Just my 2 cents worth, I think this might happen if,

1) your data set is huge. or simply, your backup file is huge

2) you made many modifications to your server.

other than that, i dont think this will happen. or who knows, there is really a bug.