frecover and NFS share

[enrico.nic]

Hi,

I am using fbackup/frecover usually on a tape autoloader, in general without any big problems.

Recently, I have used fbackup to entirely back up my system on an NFS share, apparently without any problems.

But if I try to see what the backup file contains, with

# frecover -N -f /nfs/share/filename

that should read the entire backup file, or with

# frecover -I /tmp/findex -f /nfs/share/filename

that should read the backup index at the beginning of the file

the result is always the same:

Memory fault(coredump)

Has any of you a suggestion ?

Thank you

Enrico

[Bill Hassell]

Very little information here.

What version of HP-UX are you using? (uname -a)
What Operating Environment do you have? (swlist | grep OE)
What version of fbackup are you using? (what /usr/sbin/fbackup)
What is your NFS source? (NAS array? Windows share? Linux NFS? HP-UX export? AIX export?)
How large is maxdsiz?(stsdef or kctune or kmtune)
What options do you use with fbackup for this backup?
Can you read the table of contents from a tape backup using frecover?

[enrico.nic]

Hi,

Yes, you are absolutely right., many informations were missing.

The server is an old rp3410 RISC based, with HP-UX 11.31 updated to the last Quality Patch bundle.

# swlist | grep OE

HPUX11i-BOE                   B.11.31.1209   HP-UX Base Operating Environment

# what /usr/sbin/fbackup
/usr/sbin/fbackup:
$Revision: 92453-07 linker linker crt0.o B.11.16.01 030415 $
main.c $Date: 2009/10/06 10:03:57 $Revision: r11.31/3 PATCH_11.31 (PHCO_40460)
$Revision: @(#) fbackup R11.31_BL2014_0414_1 PATCH_11.31 PHCO_43891

The NFS disk is in a NAS array

# kctune | grep maxdsiz
maxdsiz 2147483648 2147483648 Immed
maxdsiz_64bit 4294967296 4294967296 Immed

I have used fbackup with the following configuration file:

# cat config_nfs
blocksperrecord 1024
records 64
checkpointfreq 1024
readerprocesses 6
maxretries 5
retrylimit 5000000
maxvoluses 200
chgvol /usr/backup/chgvol
error /usr/backup/error_nfs
filesperfsm 200

And finally, yes, a tape backup is readable, and I can also extract the table of contents.

[Bill Hassell]

>> The server is an old rp3410 RISC based, with HP-UX 11.31 updated to the last Quality Patch bundle.
     # swlist | grep OE
     HPUX11i-BOE B.11.31.1209 HP-UX Base Operating Environment

That's current and supported which is good.

# what /usr/sbin/fbackup
/usr/sbin/fbackup:
$Revision: 92453-07 linker linker crt0.o B.11.16.01 030415 $
main.c $Date: 2009/10/06 10:03:57 $Revision: r11.31/3 PATCH_11.31 (PHCO_40460)
$Revision: @(#) fbackup R11.31_BL2014_0414_1 PATCH_11.31 PHCO_43891

This is the 11.31 version of fbackup.
Unfortunately, format changes were made for the header that make the backup images completely unusable on earlier versions of HP-UX (ie, 11.23, 11.11, etc). This was completely unacceptable so I experimented with the 11.23 version of the fbackup bundle (fbackup, frecover, fbackuprdr, fbackupwrtr). They work just fine and maintain backward readability.

I mention this as a possible test to see if a small fbackup (11.23) session sent to the NAS mountpoint can be read by the 11.23 version of frecover.

# kctune | grep maxdsiz
maxdsiz 2147483648 2147483648 Immed
maxdsiz_64bit 4294967296 4294967296 Immed

This is fine as it gives 2GB of memory for fbackup/frecover.
Check the values for shared memory. You may need to bump these up for a full backup.

>> I have used fbackup with the following configuration file:

# cat config_nfs
blocksperrecord 1024
records 64
checkpointfreq 1024
readerprocesses 6
maxretries 5
retrylimit 5000000
maxvoluses 200
chgvol /usr/backup/chgvol
error /usr/backup/error_nfs
filesperfsm 200

These are fairly good but you may see better tape performance with these numbers:

blocksperrecord 4096
checkpointfreq 8192
filesperfsm 5000

I would try a smaller backup scope, perhaps half the size of the current set of files. If successful then allowable shared memory most likely needs to be bumped higher.

>> The NFS disk is in a NAS array

Be sure that the NAS array is patched and configured for use with HP-UX 11.31. NAS arrays tend to be focused on Windows environments.

[enrico.nic · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I tried to apply a newer patch to fbackup/frecover, i.e. PHCO_44246

# what /usr/sbin/fbackup
/usr/sbin/fbackup:
$Revision: 92453-07 linker linker crt0.o B.11.16.01 030415 $
main.c $Date: 2009/10/06 10:03:57 $Revision: r11.31/3 PATCH_11.31 (PHCO_40460)
$Revision: @(#) fbackup R11.31_BL2016_0524_2 PATCH_11.31 PHCO_44246

Luckily now both frecover -I (extract the index file) and frecover -N (read the whole backup file) work against the backup file on the NFS share.

I tried the commands also on a full backup file (around 110 Gb) and it worked.

To complete the informations I gave, the NFS share is on a NetApp FAS2220 storage with NFS and CIFS enabled.

Many thanks for the informations about the 11.23 version(s) of fbackup/frecover, I have a few really old backups performed on a 11.31 system, for this reason I will try to obtain them from a 11.23 patch.

Enrico