Everything was working fine with my Arkeia setup. Then randomly, though my periodic backups have been running (Incremental and Full), they all started backing up "0" files. I double-checked my savepack, and it definitely still has the whole server marked for backup.

Does anybody have any idea, why it would do this/how to fix it?

This is the summary I’m getting about the backups that are running and but not actually backing up anything:
Backup server : tctrsrvl2
Backup start : 2006/02/15 00:40:00
Backup type : Incremental
Savepack : SAVEPACK01
Drivepack : LTOPACK
Pool : POOL01
Backup end : 2006/02/15 00:40:46
Backup statistics : "0" files, "1" MB, compressed at "1.0", "45" seconds, "1" MB/mn
Used tapes : TAPE03


I have tried making a new savepack with the same stuff in it.
I have tried backing up another save pack that saves a different server.
I have tested the connection between server and client with the arkiea chknlp utility.
I have tried using a different tape.

I have 3 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 3 (Taroon Update 4) servers
with Arkeia Network Backup 5.3.10

Thanks in advance for any help!!

Which version of Arkeia (I'm only familiar w/ 4)?
Have you tried backing up to a NULL drive?

It's Arkeia 5.2

I tried backing up to a NULL drive and it seems to work then.

Does this mean it's something wrong with the drive?

I doubt it. It probably means Arkeia has a problem talking to the tape drive.

Have you (if it is realistic) rebooted? If you can, shutdown the system and power off (including any external devices). Then power on external devices then the system. Then try another backup. If you can't reboot, then try stopping the arkeia daemon, then restarting it (see below for the start / stop commands). Then try another backup.

BTW< what kind of tape drive to you have?

There is a way to test the system's connection to the tape drive independent of ARKEIA. Look at the drive definition (in Drive Management). Make note of the rewind device. You just have to stop the arkeia daemon-

NOTE:
* if you are running the Arkeia GUI on the machine with the tape drive, exit the GUI BEFORE stoping the Arkeia daemon!
* if you have a tape library you have to stop the library service BEFORE exiting the gui.

Then you should be able to use the tape device with all the old standard tape commands. Substitute the rewind device you took note of previously for DEVTAPE below:

this will give you the status of the tape drive:
Insert a tape into the tape drive. THE FOLLOWING COMMAND WILL OVERWRITE ANYTHING ON THE TAPE. You have been warned.

this will backup everything under /etc to the tape:
this will rewind and eject the tape:
Then to restart the arkeia daemon:

That will prove the connection to the tape drive works.

NOTE - all my experience is w/ Arkeia 4.2, and I'm not familiar with the changes in v5.

Rob

I had tried rebooting the system and had no luck - but I did not power cycle the external drive while the server was off.

I ended up replacing the external drive (I know it seems like I ought to have tried that before - considering I had an extra one laying around. - but last time I had a hardware problem Arkeia could not read or write labels to the tape which in could do this time - So i didn't think it was hardware related)

Anyway - point is I switched out the tape drive and rebooted and it seems to be working properly now!

I greatly appreciate the input though. At least I know not to throw the drive away since it may have just needed to be powered down while the server was down.

As information I did try to use tar to write to the tape (before I switched the drives out) and received this error:

Thanks again for the help!