Networker

Re: [Networker] Problem with groups not starting

2006-08-12 11:37:29
Subject: Re: [Networker] Problem with groups not starting
From: "Groth, Jonathan A" <jonathan.groth AT EDS DOT COM>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2006 11:28:52 -0400
Peter,

A very good suggestion; unfortunately it's problematic for us for two
reasons:

1)  We're in a large corporate environment where everyone is
compartmentalized.  As a Backup Admin, I/we don't even have access to
cron, except by asking the system administrators pretty please (with
sugar on top!) to make changes for us.  An unfortunate restriction,
though not insurmountable.  I could probably do what I was doing before
and approximate cron, by having cron run a script * * * * * and check
for time/date details...

2)  If I understand how Start Now works (no guarantee!) it sets the
status back to Enabled or Disabled, depending on what it was set to
before Start Now.  If it were set to Enabled before, this would be a
problem if the Start Now time was set earlier than the start time in the
group, i.e., if group was set at 23:00, and Saturday needed to start at
19:00, it would end up running twice.  If set to Disabled, it would mean
having to set every time during the end-of-month period.  End-of-month
period being 5 days typically, with 18 groups... that's a lot of times
to set!  Typically there are between 10-20 time changes during the
entire end-of-month period, so leaving the groups Enabled would save a
lot of typing.  :)

Now what I could do is use scripts and nsradmin to toggle between
enabled and disabled, depending on whether or not the group's start time
needs to be changed on that day or not... a possibility, for sure!  It's
even more of a kludge than what I had before, but hey, whatever works,
right?  :)

-Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Viertel [mailto:Peter.Viertel AT macquarie DOT com] 
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 10:50 PM
To: Legato NetWorker discussion; Groth, Jonathan A
Subject: RE: [Networker] Problem with groups not starting

 

Why not just run your savegrp directly from cron when you want to start
it? 

If you do actually want the group to be managed by the networker
scheduler then having a cron job which sets the "Start Now" parameter to
yes on a group will probably be a more reliable way of doing this..


-----Original Message-----
From: Legato NetWorker discussion [mailto:NETWORKER AT listserv.temple DOT edu]
On Behalf Of Groth, Jonathan A
Sent: Saturday, 12 August 2006 7:01 AM
To: NETWORKER AT listserv.temple DOT edu
Subject: [Networker] Problem with groups not starting

Hello all, 

I'm having an odd problem with groups not starting.  Not only not
starting, but not producing any messages at all.  I'll put in some
background info below, but first, let me give the basics:

NetWorker Server:  7.2.1
OS:  Solaris 8
Group's Autostart set to Enabled
Schedule set to proper level (full) on the days in question


Background (probably too much):

Customer requires end-of-month backups to start at different times on
different days. So, a couple ksh scripts were written to set the start
times in advance, so that people wouldn't have to log in on weekends
when end-of-month falls on those days.  First script takes input (group
name, new start time, date you want the change to take place, the time
the change takes place), then it creates a "script" with all the details
nsradmin would need to do the deed, and finally it appends the input and
the location of the nsradmin "script", all on one line, to a (what I
call) control file.  Second script is run from cron * * * * * and checks
that control file; when the change date and time match, the nsradmin
"script" on that line is executed and voila! the group's start time is
changed.  This works perfectly, from what I can see.  But...

... sometimes (but not most of the time!) the groups that had their
start time change wouldn't start!  At all!  No messages, nothing in the
daemon.log, etc.  The times were successfully changed, sure, but when
the time came, NetWorker just glided past it, doing nothing.  As I wrote
above, the Groups were enabled just fine and the schedule level set.
Also worth noting that the change time was set hours before the backup
was scheduled to start, so that wasn't a conflict.  Also, this problem
has never cropped up except in those groups changed by the script.  But,
only 2 of the 20-30 group changes exhibited this behavior.  The rest ran
to expectations...

We've talked to EMC and they see no reason why this is happening, though
they believe its caused somehow by the script(s).  I'm inclined to
agree, given that this has appeared only when the script changes a
group, but I would expect it to do the same to all of the groups
changed, not a small percentage of them.  Its arbitrariness puzzles me.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.  I can post/email my uglier-than-sin
scripts, output, whatever, should anyone desire them.

Thanks for reading!

-Jon


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