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Re: Ignite 6.2.241 gives list_expander warning

 
LinuxNotMS
Advisor

Ignite 6.2.241 gives list_expander warning

Running ignite on my system (HPUX 11i) returns a "WARNING: list_expander returned a warning,please check the log file." message during the "Creating Archive File List" section. However, the creation of the ignite tape is successful - I have dumped the tape and verified all is good.

One thread suggested that an entry for the CD in fstab could cause this. I don't have an entry for the CD in my fstab.

Another suggestion was that there may be spaces or control characters a filename listed in the flist file. Nothing in the log (attached) points to such, however. I can not find anything in the flist file that looks suspicious, but that doesn't mean anything - the file is 2 Meg and it would be easy to miss something.

Any other ideas?
7 REPLIES 7
Bill Hassell
Honored Contributor

Re: Ignite 6.2.241 gives list_expander warning

One of the most common errors is a file with a leading or trailing space. This takes a lot of work to find. I located a file in /var/tmp (or maybe it was /tmp) with the same time stamp as the Ignite run with a unique name (numbers plus something like .list) which had the names of files and a number after each file. The number was the number of characters in the filename. By carefully looking at the filename, it was apparent that pax saw the file as XX characters but the name was actually xx+1, a trailing space.


Bill Hassell, sysadmin
Sameer_Nirmal
Honored Contributor

Re: Ignite 6.2.241 gives list_expander warning

Hi,

Did you see the "recovery.log" file possible warning messages ?
In this file, problem encountered by the "list_expander" should be logged. The problem is causing it to just flash a "WARNING" message which is apprearing during the recovery tape creation process session.

As you know "list_expander" is doing a job of files parsing and creates "flist" required for the archive.
The file parasing is limited depending on the include option given while making the archive. It check for every file when it walks down the root path (incluing)to determine it's type. This is applicable for normal file as well device files.

It may be a case in which the file type could not be "stat" (un-identified) maybe on account soft errors ( read error, uknown )and archive creation process need not be stopped. In this case it will flash the warning message, log the details in the log file and continue the archive creation process including those files as well.

I guess there are known cases where "stat" doesn't work ( for certain device files )and would be taken care of in the subsequent Ignite-UX versions to be followed.

Checking the "recovery.log" should be the way of knowing the 'WARNING" details.
LinuxNotMS
Advisor

Re: Ignite 6.2.241 gives list_expander warning

Sameer,
Thanks for the reply. As you can see in the recover.log that I attached to my opening question, there are no other messages that lead me in even a general direction as to where to look for a bad file name. Perhaps you see something I don't???

The device file directory might be a good place to start. I have already verified that I have no files with spaces anywhere in the name (unless they don't make it into the flist file, in which case I have to take another approach...). Checking for control characters will be trickier.

Perhaps some knows exactly how I can search for such with a "find" command?

/scott
Bernhard Mueller
Honored Contributor

Re: Ignite 6.2.241 gives list_expander warning

Scott

start with
cd /
ls -Rb | grep -e "\\\."

If that gives any output you can use find to locate the directory

Regards,
Bernhard
LinuxNotMS
Advisor

Re: Ignite 6.2.241 gives list_expander warning

OK. I've tried a couple of things and found some things, but I wanted to throw this past the crowd.

First, I've found a lot of links that point to none existant files. Would that cause this problem?

Bernhard, I tried your suggestion, and found two files in the form C:\\.. However, they are on a file system other than vg00, so they shouldn't be an issue since I'm using "-x inc_entire=vg00" in the command, right?

FWIW - the command I'm using is make_tape_recovery -P s -a "/dev/remt/0mn" -x inc_entire=vg00

Scott
Bernhard Mueller
Honored Contributor

Re: Ignite 6.2.241 gives list_expander warning

Scott,

if the "c:\"files are not in vg00 and not included, you should not have to worry (I would delete them anyway).

Links that point to non-existant files should not be a problem either.

if you have a machine for testing, it would be interesting to recover it with that tape (of courese with a different hostname and ip or disconnected from the network) and then create a new ignite tape from the recovered machine to see if you get the same error.

Regards,
Bernhard
Charles Holland
Trusted Contributor

Re: Ignite 6.2.241 gives list_expander warning

Scott,

I had the very same thing from mid November '05 to mid December '05 and spend DAYS with support along with MANY emails.

If you were only using the command that you posted 1/4/2006 @ 17:02:46 GMT you should not be getting the error. I note that for the -a parameter you had /dev/remt/0mn in double quotes. The double quotes are not necessary , but the spelling doesn't help either.

If you were to run from command line

make_tape_recovery -AIv -P s -x inc_entire=/dev/vg00 -a /dev/rmt/0mn

I believe it would work fine.

In reviewing the log that you provided it appears, from the parameters I can dig out of it, it appears that you ran it:

interactively (-i 1) what the purpose of the 1 is I don't understand
title (-t 1) was asigned
description with blank (-d Recovery\ Archive )
tape format of tar (-m t) was selected
restart appears to also be selected (-r pa).

I believe that the BIGGEST problem I had was trying to get embedded blanks in the -d parameter. I tried ALL kinds of combinations and finally gave up and used a _ instead of a space. I also gave up using the -t parameter as the default was quite sufficent. As an example here is my command line

make_tape_recovery -AIv -P s -d AABBCCDD_vg00 -x inc_entire=/dev/vg00 -x exclude=/tmp -x exclude=/var/tmp -a /dev/rmt/0mn


This is NOT keyed in but built from a server non-specific script, whis is working just fine now. I found it in itrc. Should want to look at it let me know and I'll attact it in a subsequent post.
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted" A. Einstein