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Service Mysterously Stops Running

I use Symantec Backup Exec to backup my Linux servers to tape and Symantec provides us with a VRTSralus client that I install on my RHEL4 ES servers. The client is fairly simple to install. It looks to be a script that auto installs everything and then I just need to start the service via the following command:

Code:

[root@lt2fs1 ~]# /etc/init.d/VRTSralus.init 

Symantec Backup Exec Remote Agent for Linux/Unix Servers

Usage: VRTSralus.init { start | stop }

[root@lt2fs1 ~]# /etc/init.d/VRTSralus.init start

Starting Symantec Backup Exec Remote Agent ......

Starting Symantec Backup Exec Remote Agent:                              [  OK  ]

Now this works great however the stupid client stops randomly and I don't know why. The server stays up and running fine and so does the LAN connection but sometimes the server will attempt to contact the client for a backup and the VRTSralus agent is stopped and I miss my backup. I have checked /var/log/messages and also contacted Symantec and nobody knows why. This happens on pretty much all my Linux RHEL4 servers and I have even reinstalled the client to no avail.

Is there something I can run to find out when the service stops running? Perhaps if I can see that they all stop running at the same time or understand what is causing them to stop I can correct this.

Right now the only way I know if it is running is if I run the following command:

Code:

[root@lt2fs1 ~]# ps aux | grep "VRTS"

root    16830  0.0  0.3 67092 6892 pts/1    Sl  18:01  0:00 /opt/VRTSralus/bin/beremote

root    16842  0.0  0.0  5544  620 pts/1    S+  18:07  0:00 grep VRTS

Bummer. I didn't realize that product was so bad on Linux. I thought the main barriers were cost and complexity. I don't get why they need a client process running all the time, either (and as root!) That sounds sort of like a Windows relic. Does it work alright when it does work? And doesn't the client keep any log files anywhere? Or a pid file? Can you look inside the VRTSralus.init and see what it is doing?

If you just want to know when it stops running, start your own background process with a shell script that checks it and sleeps 60 in an infinite loop. Have it alert you or email you if it isn't there. That doesn't really solve the problem, though. You still need to know where to look for logs or errors.

I am having the same issue running SLES10 SP1. I was wondering if you ever found a solution for this issue, or if you found where the log files are stored?

I have not yet resolved this issue but found that simply running a cron job works rather than dealing with Symantec support which sucks by the way...

I don't want to get to excited, but I just rebuilt the server that my disk to disk data was going to and installed SLES10 64bit on it. It was running SLES10 SP1 64bit. All jobs have completed successfully so far.