On Dec 30, 2005, at 3:37 PM, Richard Rhodes wrote:

Hi Everyone,

We have 2 Solaris v8 nodes that backup to TSM v5.3 server.  Scheduled
backups are missing
the /var filesystem while cmd line incrementials (dsmc inc /var) work.
...

Richard -

The problem of the Solaris client mysteriously skipping file systems
is one which goes back years, unfortunately, and has usually been
caused by the way the client regards the file system when it gathers
stat information from the operating system. This can be caused by the
way in which the file system was mounted... In the 2001 era, this was
due to automounter complications. Unexpected file system types is
another potential cause.

An unqualified 'dsmc Incremental' (as a scheduled backup usually
performs) backs up all local file systems, or those specifically
specified in client Domain statements. In this case, the client is
left to its own discretion to judge whether the file systems really
are local, and will implicitly skip those it believes not to be
local. Manually performing 'dsmc Incremental /whatever' on some
directory name is not equivalent, as that is specifying that the
object is to be backed up, whatever it is.

The non-trivial task is to determine what's odd about the /var
instances which the TSM client skips. Doing comparative 'mount -v' or
'mount -p' commands on the good and bad systems may help reveal a
difference. A client trace may be needed to see what's going on. (In
the AIX client, at least, it stats all mounted file systems, not just
the Domain-listed ones as it starts.) I would also look for boot-time
messages about /var in /var/log/messages. And don't overlook
dsmerror.log.

    Richard Sims