Networker

Re: [Networker] strange Linux client error/warning message

2006-10-12 16:58:03
Subject: Re: [Networker] strange Linux client error/warning message
From: Tim Mooney <Tim.Mooney AT NDSU DOT EDU>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:50:10 -0500
In regard to: Re: [Networker] strange Linux client error/warning message,...:

Christian Drexler wrote:
Gurus,

I have a Linux client running RH ES 3 X86_64 with latest updates that
gives me the following warning message with every backup completion report:
<quote>
Warning: * cds5:/ save: Warning: 64-bit inode number uses high order
32-bits.
</quote>
The message has appeared first 9 days ago but I can not correlate this
to any system event on the client or on the backup server.

The client is running networker version 7.1.4-1.i686 with ext3 as the
file system, the server (Solaris 8) is running 7.1.4 as well.

I have searched the knowledge base but did not find anything related.
Does anybody know what this means and if it can be safely ignored?

I don't have any answers, but I'm curious about the size of the
filesystem in question.  I wonder if it's too large for the 32 bit
Networker app to handle.  As a preliminary test to see how serious this
may be you might want to try and find all files that have been created
in this filesystem since this message first appeared and then see if
those files show up in the backup and do a test restore on some of them.

The archives for this list don't go back far enough (January 9th of 2002),
but the issue with inodes > 2^32 was first reported by Michael Wahlers
at the NetWorker BOF at LISA 2001.  I happened to be at LISA that year
and attended the BOF, and then summarized some of the topics from the BOF
to the NetWorker mailing list.

Back then, NetWorker silently skipped inodes > 2^32, which nearly cost
Michael 800 GB of data.  There was a lengthy thread on this list about
the issue, and it was mentioned in the "Fixed Bugs List" for some later
version of the product (I forget which).

It's great that NetWorker now at least warns about it, but it's not
something that I think an administrator can safely ignore.  Based on
other emails in this thread, it looks like Christian has narrowed down
which file is causing the problem, which is good.

If I were faced this problem, I would use the "find" command with the
"-ls" option (which shows the inode #) to locate the file(s), and then
verify (using nsrinfo and recover) that the files were indeed backed up
and can be recovered.

Tim
--
Tim Mooney                                           Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT edu
Information Technology Services                      (701) 231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building                           (701) 231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164

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