Hi,

I spoke WAY too soon. It turns out the initial SOLUTION I posted is only
true for the Classic MacOS (7.x - 9.x), but the MacOSX people were still
seeing anywhere from 300MB to 2.5GB of Incremental per day. This is very
likely due to the 'Bundle bit' in OSX. We determined that by excluding all
directories with apps in them and the incrementals went down to 'normal'
(less than 10MB of change for most folks per day).

The question becomes, is there going to be an official 'fix' for this?

Here is a user's statement that led to the solution:
One thing occurred to me when you mentioned that applications appear change
a lot of files: does Veritas recognize the "bundle bit" of OS X? As you
probably know, OS X applications are made
up of many (often hundreds) of individual files. These files are all stored
together in a directory with a bundle bit turned on. The OS recognizes the
bundle bit and presents the collection of files to the user as a single
application file. In other words, from the user's perspective, the
directory *is* the application. As far as the user is concerned, it's just
one file. From the OS side, though, it's a collection of many files.

If Veritas does not recognize the bundle bit, then it makes sense that
every time an application were launched, Veritas would think that the files
that make up the application had changed and would try to back them up.
Could this be what is happening?

History:

> For those interested:
>
> Macintoshes will backup everything and anything regardless of schedule if
> the cross mount points exist. By not selecting cross mount points in each
> class of MACs, all is now fine.
>
> Cheers!
>
>
> Chris
>
>
>
>
> > Hi again,
> >
> > Here are some more details on this issue, which is still plaguing us.
> >
> > Original question:
> >
> > >> Hi,
> > > > We have a few clients (not all) that every single night we run a
INCR
> =
> > > > backup (not a CINC or FULL) the amount backed up is exactly the same
=
> > > > size as a FULL, which has caused us to use hundreds of tapes in the
> last
> > =
> > > > few weeks. Any ideas why this wouyld happen?
> > >
> >
> > This question is where we were able to narrow things down.
> > > What kind of clients?  Are they windows machines or UNIX?
> >
> > We have narrowed it down. All the systems with this problem are
> Macintoshes
> > (7*-OSX). All of their classes have the 'Cross Mount Points' set, so
that
> we
> > can use the include_list and exclude_lists, since they appear to ahve
not
> > been being used with the ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES directive.
> >
> > Perhaps the cross mount points is causing this? We will be trying out a
> set
> > of classes without that checked, but we are worried that people's
> directives
> > in the include/exclude lists are not getting read. Is there are way to
> > assure that this will happen without the cross mount points?
> >
> > It is true that all have antivirus software, but our other home grown
> > product (called MacDumps) has not had this problem.
> >
> > Any further ideas would be great.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> >
> > Chris
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Veritas-bu maillist  -  Veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
> > http://mailman.eng.auburn.edu/mailman/listinfo/veritas-bu
> >
>
>