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Novell - Veritas Backup Exec dismounts NLM's - - Resolved

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Post October 7th, 2003, 3:28 pm

Apologies for putting this in the Windows forum, but since there's no Novell forum and the network clients are all Windows, it was the only place I could think of.

Here's the problem. My new company has had a conflict with their Veritas backup software dismounting all the loaded modules when trying to run. Best I could tell, they haven't had a good backup in a couple months. The problem apparently started after they did an upgrade to Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition. It's not consistant either. The first thing I noticed was that the one day it happened everytime , they had the backup and virus scan scheduled to run at the same time. *duh! Whoever came up with that idea? But I was able to duplicate the problem yesterday without VPSTART even loaded.

My probable solution is to uninstall Veritas, update the Norton to version 8.5 and reinstall Backup Exec. I'm hoping that will solve it (assuming I don't screw it up since I've never used either proggie).

I'm just wondering if anyone else has ever run accross this conflict or any thoughts on solutions.

Thanks
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Post October 7th, 2003, 3:28 pm

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Post October 7th, 2003, 7:04 pm

After 8 hours working with Veritas today I'm not a very happy camper with there whole program. One of my clients is running it on a win2000 server. The main problem was we just got done installing a new win2000 small business server into the same network. Needless to say that didn't go as well as expected either. Looking at the veritas website isn't much help either, and if you call tech support expect anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour wait before you get somebody other than a salesperson. After 8 hours of working on the backup exec upgrade I had to install today I'm waiting to see if it backs up all the data it is suppose too. But I won't know that till tomorrow. They are running on a domain and not a novell network. But if you do get a breathing person on the phone they will be pretty helpful. Just remember your server is your media server :D . If your running XP or NT on any of the machines you might be required to download an upgrade. The good news is the upgrade was free, the bad news is it was 100mb file :shock: We were running v8.6 windows server 2000 and NT. Be ready for a long day, sorry I couldn't be anymore help :D


Basiclly your probably going to have to update Veritas. Depending on how recently your company bought the software. You will need the product key activation code off the certificate they gave them when they bought the original software package.

Oh and the waiting music is very nice to listen too :twisted:
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Post October 7th, 2003, 7:18 pm

Thanks...it's my first real/time experience with Veritas other than a classroom environment. With Novell, it looks like I can do a reinstall without many issues (I hope), but I'm only about halfway through the 700 some-odd page book that comes with it. I'm hoping I don't have to call tech support, but at least the good news is I got a great HP support person on the line today to try to fix a scanner problem (I know --totally unrelated) I think the conflict has everything to do with the install of the Semantec upgrade. I'm working that end first and I'll go from there.

And yes, I did look at the Veritas site and it didn't provide "jack" -- I know what you mean.
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Post October 7th, 2003, 7:31 pm

Depending on how old the revision of veritas you have, you still might need to download an update. Did I mention I really don't like symantec either :D but that is besides the point.

Oh there was a book for Veritas :shock: , I should have read it. But then again I probably would still be reading it and come to find out I needed to upgrade to the latest revision anyways. But it would have helped to know how the whole system works and how to use it correctly. We'll see tomorrow if the DIF backup worked correctly if not, I may have to find that manual or print a new one from the CD. Get lots of sleep tonight, you'll need it for tomorrow :D
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Post October 7th, 2003, 9:00 pm

Yep...that's just about where I'm at. Thanks again and hitting the sack too.
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Post October 9th, 2003, 11:55 pm

So how did it turn out with Veritas? My DIF's worked for the most part monday I'll see if the NORMAL backup worked correctly. :D
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Post October 10th, 2003, 4:22 am

Still working on it. I did find the abend log yesterday and have a ticket into Veritas support via email. I just got an email back from them stating we're using an older build and to download the newest one and that should fix it. We'll see. I'll attempt that today.
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Post October 10th, 2003, 7:51 am

Good luck with it. :D
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Post October 13th, 2003, 3:58 pm

Update

I purposely unloaded Backup Exec and it wasn't running over the weekend. When Norton attempted the Full Server Scan Sunday morning, it caused the same issue. I incorrectly identified the issue in my original post thinking that it abended the server, but that's not really what it was doing (the last four times this happend it wasn't registered as an abend in the abend log). In essence, we have two volumes - Data: and Sys: What it's doing is dismounting those volumes.

Instances I've observed so far.
1. It does it when Backup Exec is not running and Norton tries to run a full scan.
2. It does it when Norton RealTime scan is running and you try to run a backup job
3. It does it when Norton RealTime scan isn't running and you try to run a backup job.

I'm not going to attempt a fix until Saturday when no one is in the office so I don't affect anyone with crashes, so if anyone has any ideas in the meantime, I'd appreciate them.
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Post October 13th, 2003, 9:17 pm

You may have to give a call into Norton also. Is the Realtime scan still loaded in memory even thou it's not running? Have you tried and totally disable all of the Norton stuff and run a backup? I don't know enough about how Norton, Veritas, and Novell all coincide :( I'm still working on getting people to leave there machines on so I don't get a failed backup. Even thou it completes everything else except for the machine that is turned off. I guess I'm just trying to be a perfectionist. Sorry I couldn't be more help.
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Post October 14th, 2003, 4:10 am

Thanks anyway - your thoughts have given me ideas to play with.
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Post October 20th, 2003, 10:37 am

I've done more research into this problem and to save time on the explanation, here's a copy of what I left at one of the Novell forums. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Quote:
I'm a new administrator here. I'm about intermediate with Novell, but learning quickly. Here is a description of the problem.

When trying to run a tape backup job or Norton AV Coporate Edition Full scan on the server they dismount the Sys: and Data: volumes. This problem began after the first upgrade of NAV v7.5 We are currently using Veritas Backup Exec v8.5 and Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition v8.1 I've tried running the backup with and without Real Time Scan running. It dismounts the volumes in either case. I've tried doing Manual scans without BEStart being loaded as well as scheduled scans and it does this in either case.

Both were doing just fine prior to beginning to update Norton. Backup Exec has not been updated and is still the same revision that was working properly prior to this.

System Info:
Novell Small Business Suite 5.1
Support Pack Revision 05
Server Version 5.00.10 July 10, 2002
Samsung SP4004H hard drive
Sony SDT-9000 Tape Backup

Error messages:
Volume DATA dismounted due to drive deactivation
Error writing FAT table for volume servername/DATA
Volume SYS dismounted due to drive deactivation
ERROR writing FAT table for volume servname/SYS

When trying to mount SYS: after this I get this message:
There are no accessable disk drives with Netware Partitions. Check to see that needed disc drivers have been loaded and that your disk drives are properly connected and powered on.
Volume SYS could not be mounted. Some or all volume segments cannot be located.

Immediately following that message, I get several (enough to fill up the screen) lines of this message:
GW Gateway: Unable to load gateway strings from gwia.fil

In addition, I'm not sure if this is related or not so I'll include this as well. Around midnite on some but not all evenings I get at random the following two error messages:
1. Error expanding servername/SYS directory because directory size limit was exceeded.
2. Insufficient directory space (or memory) to preserve SYS:RF91D9A0.016 during file erase.

In addition, this does not appear as an abend in the abend log.

Research:
I did find the following two TID's that appear to indicate that the problem could be hardware (possibly harddrive) related:
TID10058702
TID10021917

I'm not ruling out the fact that it could be the hard drive, in which case (since we haven't had a backup here in months) I could get a ne HD and mirror the original, then swap drives. I'd prefer to do that only as an absolute last resort since I only know half of what I'm doing here.

I am more inclined to believe that it has something to do with either the Backup Exec or the NAV.

In addition, I also found the following link which indicated it could be related to compression:

http://www.tek-tips.com/gpviewthread.cf ... /3/lev3/19

Would appreciate any advice, suggestions for further troubleshooting, or possible solutions.
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Post December 6th, 2003, 1:32 pm

I don't like to let a problem hang there without posting the solution if I've found one. I actually haven't figured out what to do about it, yet, but at least I discovered the cause of the problem. I have 6 Root directories that have corrupted files in them. I've identified 3 so far, and will have to do more research next Saturday to identify the remainder. The process I used to discover the "bad" directories, was a simple one. Just started doing backup jobs on one root directory at a time until I came across one that shut down the server. Next week, I'll do the same process within the subdirectories of those six until I find the culprit files.

The problem is that if anything touches these files, the second the focus gets shifted to the file, it causes a drive deactivation and the server volumes dismount. And I mean anything - I even just right-clicked on one of them, and that was all it took. BAM! server was down instantly.

It completely explains why it was happening during compression, tape backups and virus scans, because all three processes have to touch those files.

Now just to decide what to do about them if I can't even click on them to delete them. So far they are all unused files, so deleting them is my current solution. I'll probably have to try it from DOS.

Anyway, thanks for all who tried to help prior. This one is almost resolved. Just wanted to ModernDestroyer in particular know how it turned out.
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Post December 7th, 2003, 3:44 pm

Thanks for the info ATNO :D

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