IBM Tivoli Storage Manager V5.5 AIX Backup-Archive Client Known Problems and Limitations

Common Tivoli Storage Manager Client known problems and limitations

• Interrupt with CTRL-C

  During a command line client operation, CTRL-C might result in a TSM client program exception or other unexpected behavior. To abort a command line client operation, use the 'Q' key instead of CTRL-C.

• Web Client tree expansion

  When using the Web Client, the browser can crash if you do the following, using the view menu item in the backup or restore tree window:

  • Click on "Expand Entire Branch"
  • Then click on "Collapse Entire Branch"
• Web Client font requirements for non-English file names
  • For browsers running on AIX, the browser machine must have the WorldType fonts (available as package X11.fnt.ucs.ttf - AIXwindows Unicode True Type Fonts on the AIX distribution media) installed.
• Logfile out of space handling

  If any log file (dsmerror.log, dsmsched.log, or dsmwebcl.log) runs out of space during a session, writing to that log ceases, but other processing continues. End of processing return codes will reflect all errors and conditions, not just those we were able to log.

  To prevent this problem, set the ERRORLOGMAXSIZE (for dsmerror.log) or SCHEDLOGMAXSIZE (for dsmsched.log and dsmwebcl.log) options to limit the log size to available space. Note that using these options causes the log data that would exceed the maximum to be written at the beginning of the log, overwriting the oldest entries.

• ERRORLOGMAX and SCHEDLOGMAX behavior in out-of-space conditions:

  If the specified maximum error log file size is greater than the available free space on the specified file system and the log is being transitioned from a non-wrapped log to a wrapped log, the following error message will be issued:
  
  ANS1521E Failure writing to a Tivoli Storage Manager log or log-related file: <LOG FILE NAME>, errno = 28, There is not enough space in the file system

  This is correct behavior. However, the log header record might be incomplete or there may be no "END OF DATA" text marker at the end of the error log. After space has been made available, the TSM client will subsequently treat the log as unwrapped because a valid header record is not found. A new log will be created and this partial log will be written to the prune file.

  If there is insufficient space in the file system to append an entry to the log, the TSM client will continue running, but the error message will not be logged.

• If client encryption is used and you choose to abort a command line backup or archive operation when prompted for an encryption key, the entire operation will immediately end with return code (RC) 12, even if there are other files eligible for backup that do not require encryption

• When regional settings are updated in the Java GUI preference editor, the GUI needs to be restarted to activate the changes.

• If you perform a backup image for a filesystem while there is a pending restore for filespace on that filesystem, the server displays message ANR9999D in the console.

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Common Unix and Linux known problems and limitations

• NFSTIMEOUT option
  This is applicable to all UNIX platforms. The nfstimeout option can fail if the NFS mount is hard. If a hang occurs, remove the nfstimeout option from your options file and mount the NFS file system soft mounted, as follows:

  mount -o soft,timeo=5,retry=5 machine:/filesystem /mountpoint

  The parameters are defined as follows:

  • soft: Generates a soft mount of the NFS file system. If an error occurs, the stat() function returns with an error. If the option hard is used, stat() does not return until the file system is available.
  • timeo=n Sets the time out for a soft mount error to n seconds
  • retry=n Set the internal retries and the mount retries to n, the default is 10000.

• TSM editor in various terminal environments

  The TSM interactive-mode command line editor is designed to work in the following terminal environments:

  • xterm --- This is the default if terminal type not recognized.
  • xterm (Linux KDE)
  • aixterm
  • dtterm
  • VT-100
  • Iris ANSI
  • Ansi Terminal (SCO Unix)
  • Link220 (Sequent PTX)
  
  Each of these terminals has a slightly different key map, so certain keys, e.g., destructive backspace, or the arrow keys, may not be supported on your workstation. If your terminal type is not supported, or you find working with the supplied editor support to be inconvenient, then add EDITOR NO to your dsm.opt file to use the native input support. Using this option will disable interactive-mode command recall.

• DBCS support

  The current TSM Client design does not allow for entering DBCS characters when running the Backup/Archive command line client in loop/interactive mode. There are two work-arounds for this:

  1. Run dsmc in batch mode
  2. Turn the Editor off by setting EDITOR NO in your dsm.opt
  
• Client interoperability
  • Files backed up or archived by the z/OS Unix System Services client cannot be restored or retrieved by any other TSM Unix client. Files backed up or archived by any other TSM Unix client cannot be restored or retrieved by the z/OS Unix System Services client.
  • Files backed up or archived with DES-56 encryption on Intel platforms, e.g., Linux86, cannot be restored or retrieved on non-Intel, e.g., AIX, and vice versa. AES-128 is the recommended encryption method.
• File names containing characters with code > 127

  If you would like to back up files with names containing characters with a code > 127 ensure that you have chosen a SBCS character set for your locale. The default code page C or the code page POSIX supports characters up to 127 only. Files whose names contain special characters will be skipped if C or POSIX is used.

  It is strongly recommended to perform a system backup by using a SBCS character set to prevent any file or directory from being skipped. This behavior for different locales is intended.

• Restore and retrieve using FOLLOWSYMBOLIC option

  If you want to restore or retrieve to a destination path that contains a symbolic link to a directory, use "FOLLOWSYMBOLIC Yes" setting either during the operation or in your client options file (dsm.opt). This setting will allow you to restore or retrieve the original directory tree underneath the destination path. Otherwise, you will get ANS4029E error during restore or retrieve.

• Option and input files in DBCS locales

  If you create TSM client option and input files(such as dsm.opt, dsm.sys and filelists) using different SBCS locales or using DBCS locales, the TSM client may not correctly process the file names in those files. You may receive error messages ANS1228E or ANS4005E.

  Ensure that all TSM client option and input files (dsm.opt, dsm.sys, filelist, etc) are created in the same SBCS locale as the TSM client.

Java GUI and Web client known problems and limitations

• The Web/Java GUI client will fail to restore a directory if a filespace with the same name exists on the Tivoli Storage Manager server. You might see the error message "No Objects on the server match query" or "ANS1395E The destination filespace or drive letter is unavailable. The following object is not processed: Filespace: '/'".

  For example, '/opt' is a file system backed up by Tivoli Storage Manager. After reinstalling the machine, '/opt' is a directory below file system '/'. File system '/opt' no longer exists on the Tivoli Storage Manager client machine. The file system '/' and all of its subdirectories, including directory '/opt', is backed up by Tivoli Storage Manager. At this point there are both '/' and '/opt' file spaces on the Tivoli Storage Manager server for this Tivoli Storage Manager client node. Trying to restore files out of filespace '/', directory '/opt' fails using the Web/Java GUI (dsmj) client.

  If you experience this problem, the workaround is to use the command line Tivoli Storage Manager client to restore the files. Put the file space name in curly brackets.

  Example:  
  dsmc restore "{/}opt/subdirectory/*" -subdir=yes
   

• The maximum trace file size (tracemax) for the Java GUI preference editor is 2147483647 MB. This is a temporary workaround until the preference editor can accommodate larger numbers.

• Web Client Security Exception

  If you get a Security Exception error when running the Web Client in your browser due to the Web Client trying to open a TCP/IP socket to a socks server, disable the proxy server via your browser settings or Java Plugin control panel. See the "Starting a Web Client Session" section in Chapter 3 "Getting Started" of the "IBM Tivoli Storage Manager for UNIX and Linux Backup-Archive Clients Installation and User's Guide" for more information.

• Web Client concurrent restore

  Running more than one restore or retrieve operation at the same time from the Web Client might cause the browser to hang when destination or message windows from the different restore/retrieve processes appear on the screen at the same time. If you observe such behavior, close the Web Client browser windows, stop the TSM Agent service, then try again using only one Web Client session.

• Insufficient space in Javaheap (Java GUI)

  If you receive the following messages from JavaT Virtual Machine (JVM) while running DSMJ:
  
  JVMST109: Insufficient space in Javaheap to satisfy allocation request
  JVMDG217: Dump Handler is Processing OutOfMemory - Please Wait.
  JVMDG315: JVM Requesting Heap dump file
  
  these errors indicate that your JVM maximum heap size is too small. The default value is 64M. To increase the maximum heap size and avoid this issue, add the option -Xmxn (where n is size in MB) in DSMJ script, like that:

java -Xmx256m  -DDSM_LANG=$LANG   -DDSM_CONFIG=$DSM_CONFIG -DDSM_DIR=$DSM_DIR \
-DDSM_LOG=$DSM_LOG -DDSM_OPTIONS="$OPTIONS" -DDSM_ROOT=$PWD    \
    ${JAVA_XARGS} -jar dsm.jar
 
This example increases the maximum heap size to 256MB.

• Search/Filter (Web/Java GUI)

  The Search/Filter function might appear unresponsive when searching through very large file systems. This is caused by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) running out of memory. You should see a "java.lang.OutOfMemoryError" in the Java console.

  The Search/Filter function is not supported for Data Protection for Lotus Domino and Data Protection for WAS objects.
  

• Problems with different JRE versions
  • There are several different Java Runtime Environment (JRE) versions available. Depending on the version and the operating system, there are some known problems related to JRE. See the Software Requirements section for the supported and required JRE version to be used with the TSM Java GUI for this platform.
  • Some JRE versions have problems transfering the cursor focus to the components. For example it could be that shortcuts of the menu (e.g., ALT-F to open the file menu) and Combo-boxes in a modal dialog by pressing the mouse button may not get the focus correctly. To solve that problem you need to transfer the cursor focus manually to that component by pressing the TAB key (or CTRL-TAB) several times.
• Preference Editor limitations (Java GUI)
  • The domain list in the "Backup" tab of the preferences editor does not reflect any domains excluded via the dash operator after "domain ALL_LOCAL" in the domain statement of the client options file.
  • When any option is changed in the preferences editor of the Java GUI, the domain list is rewritten to the client options file.
  • When using the preferences editor to modify the Include-Exclude list, and the selected rule contains a space (for example, /test dir/inclexcl.txt), the rule will not be correctly displayed in the "Filename or Pattern" field. To work around this problem, you can either manually update this field via the "Browse" button, or manually type in the correct path. This will be fixed in a future release.
  • The Preferences Editor invoked from the UNIX Backup-Archive Client Java GUI uses the DSM_CONFIG variable instead of the passed parameter "optfile".
  • On Unix and Linux systems using the Java GUI, there is a problem when the dsm.opt file is not present. The client will stop loading at 90% if there is no dsm.opt present in the directory where the backup-archive client is installed.
    Workaround:
    Create a dsm.opt file in the directory where the client is installed with the Servername option in it..
    Example:
    Servername test_server
    

Common AIX known problems and limitations

• Resolving errors during AIX JFS2 snapshot based backup/archive and image backup:

  TSM client supports snapshot based backup/archive to provide a consistent backup of files and online image backup by exploiting the integrated snapshot capability provided by JFS2 on AIX 5.3 or later.

  TSM client deletes the AIX JFS2 snapshot created during the backup process during TSM termination. However, there are situations in which AIX may fail the snapshot delete request made by TSM.

  The following are some of the cases in which a snapshot delete request may fail:

  1. User types ctrl-c during a TSM snapshot backup process. In this case the JFS2 snapshot unmount request may fail with "Device Busy" error due to the TSM process being in the middle of accessing the snapshot.
  2. User invokes two TSM snapshot backup requests concurrently for the same filesystem.

  For example: dsmc backup image /fs1 from one console and dsmc backup image /fs1 from a second console concurrently. In this case, if the TSM process 1 from console 1 created the first snapshot for /fs1 and the TSM process 2 from console 2 created the second snapshot for /fs1, then if process 2 happens to finish first and tries to delete the snapshot, AIX will fail the delete request.
  3. User invokes two TSM snapshot backup requests concurrently for two virtual mount points whose source filesystem is the same.

  For example: dsmc incr /fs1/level1/dir1 from one console and dsmc incr /fs1/level2/level3/dir3 from a second console concurrently.

  
  The reason for this is that AIX expects us to issue the snapshot delete requests in a certain order with the oldest snapshot deletion being requested first, next oldest snapshot deletion being requested next and so on. If TSM is not able to honor this sequence due to concurrent processes creating snapshots for the same file system, AIX will fail the delete requests. In the above situations, TSM will log a warning message asking the user to delete the snapshots manually. In some cases, TSM may even fail the backup. In this case, the user will have to delete the snapshots manually and retry the operation.

  It is strongly recommended to avoid concurrent TSM snapshot operations on the same file system that may lead to snapshot deletion failures.

  Use the following steps to perform a manual snapshot deletion:

  1. snapshot -q -c' ' srcFS
  2. df -k
  3. umount -f /tsmxxxxxxxxxx
  4. rmdir /tsmxxxxxxxxxx
  5. snapshot -d /dev/tsmxxxxxxxxxx
  6. If snapshot delete fails with Device Busy or some other error message, unmount the source filesystem: umount -f srcFS and retry snapshot delete.
  7. ls -l /dev/tsmxxxxxxxxxx
  8. If there are any /dev/tsmxxxxxxxxxx LVs are remaining: rmlv -f /tsmxxxxxxxxxx
  9. If you have unmounted source filesystem, mount it: mount srcFS
  
  If there are any snapshots that failed to be deleted during a previous TSM execution, TSM attempts to delete them during its next invocation. The reason for this is while older snapshots remain, AIX will fail deletion requests for newer snapshots for a given file system.

  There are some cases where TSM will not attempt to delete older snapshots:

  1. If the snapshot was not created by TSM. TSM names its snapshots with the prefix tsm in order to distinguish them from other snapshots created for the same file system. In this case TSM will give an error message asking the user to delete the older snapshot and retry the operation.
  2. If the snapshot is created by TSM but is still mounted. In this case, the snapshot is in active use by some other TSM process and cannot be deleted.
  3. If the snapshot is created by TSM, is not mounted but is newly created. In this case, the snapshot may have been just created by some other TSM process and cannot be deleted.
  
  In all such cases, the user may have to perform a manual deletion as leaving unused older snapshots around will cause subsequent TSM backups to fail to delete snapshots.

  NOTE: AIX has some defect fixes related to JFS2 snapshots in AIX 5.3.7 (AIX 5.3 ML7) or later and AIX 6.1 or later. If these fixes are not applied, it may cause either an AIX system crash or TSM hang during snapshot deletion and snapshot query processes. It may also cause data corruption during used block image backup. Thus, TSM will not perform snapshot monitoring, the snapshot deletion feature described above and used block image backup unless AIX is at the levels mentioned above. In order to exploit these features ensure that your OS level is at AIX 5.3.7 (AIX 5.3 ML7) or later and AIX 6.1 or later.

• Used Block Image backup:

  TSM client will perform used block image backup for both snapshot and static image backups by default, unless:
  1. AIX OS level is lower than 5.3.7.
  2. The option imagegapsize is set to zero.
  3. File system is not AIX JFS2.

  NOTE: Message ANS1505W incorrectly asks the user to upgrade to AIX 5.3 (AIX 5.3 ML6.4) in order to enable the Used Block image backup feature. Users should upgrade to AIX 5.3.7 (AIX 5.3 ML7) in order to enable the Used Block image backup feature.

• Symbolic link as a virtual mount point:

  Do not define symbolic links as virtual mount points, when performing snapshot based file backup/archive. In scenarios similar to the following, make sure that you set snapshotproviderfs=NONE or remove the snapshotproviderfs option.

  Example:

  • Here, /fs1 is a file system with a directory name dir1 which has one or more files and subdirectories.
  • Create a symbolic link to /fs1/dir1 under a second file system /fs2 as follows: ln -s /fs1/dir1 /fs2/dir2
  • In dsm.opt file, set: followsymbolic yes
  • In dsm.sys file, set:
  • snapshotproviderfs NONE
  • virtualmountpoint /fs2/dir2
  • Execute: dsmc incr /fs2/dir2
• Performing snapshot backup of multiple virtual mount points for a given file system:

  If you are performing a snapshot backup of two or more virtual mount points for the same file system with a single command, such as:

  • dsmc incr /fs1/level1/dir1 /fs1/level1/level2/dir2 /fs1/level1/level2/level3/dir3
  
  TSM client will take a single snapshot of filesystem /fs1 to backup all three virtual mount points.

  In this case, make sure that you specify a single presnapshotcmd and a single postsnapshotcmd for the entire command as shown below:

  • dsmc incr /fs1/level1/dir1 /fs1/level1/level2/dir2 /fs1/level1/level2/level3/dir3 -presnapshotcmd=pre-script -postsnapshotcmd=post-script
• Using ssh localhost dsmc command:

  When running ssh localhost dsmc command, the TSM client uses the server stanza defined in the dsm.opt file in the default installation directory /usr/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin, ignoring the environment variable DSM_CONFIG, if it is set. Make sure that the dsm.opt file in the default installation directory has the correct server stanza, when you are invoking dsmc with ssh.

• Restoring a file as a non-root TSM authorized user:

  When restoring a file as a non-root TSM authorized user, the restored file is not afterwards owned by the TSM authorized user that restored the file, if the restore overwrites the original file.

  • Set up a non-root TSM authorized user, say tsmuser.
  • Create a directory structure such as: /fs1/testdir with file file1.
  • Set the permissions on the directory testdir as 755 and owned by root, the permissions on the file file1 as 777 and owned by a different user than the TSM authorized user, say testusr.
  • Backup the testdir directory as the TSM authorized user: dsmc sel "/fs1/testdir/*" -su=y
  • Modify the contents of the original file file1
  • As the TSM authorized user, without removing the original, restore testdir directory to original location: dsmc rest "/svt1/testdir/*" -su=y -repl=y
  
  The restored file should be owned by the authorized user tsmuser. However, the restored file file1 is still owned by the original owner testusr.

  In order to avoid this problem, retore the file either as root or as the original owner of the file.

• VxFS Sparse File Restore

  When a sparse file is restored in Veritas file system it may occupy more disk space than it did originally at the time of backup. This is a limitation caused by the inner workings of the space allocation alogorithm used by the file system.

• Because of the limited functionality of the dtterm application, not all function keys of the command line clients operate as desired. The Control-Left and Control-Right combinations and the Home and End key do not work. In the Aixterm environment the keys operate as specified.

• Use NDMP directory level backup with valid filespace mapping.

• If COMMMethod or LANFREECommmethod options are set to SHAREdmem, AIX environment variable EXTSHM needs to be turned on to enable extended shared memory. In order to turn on EXTSHM setting, do one of the following.
  1. To make this a permanent change, add the following line to the /etc/environment file:
  EXTSHM=ON
  2. To make the change in the immediate shell, enter:
  EXTSHM=ON
  export EXTSHM
  Note: Change is effective until logging out of this shell.
  
• If the cluster service is HACMP 5.3, a return code of -2 or -4 can mean the cluster service is not enabled, the Cluster Information Daemon is not started, or the cluster service has not finished initializing. User action is to be sure that the cluster software (clinfo) is running and fully initialized.

• Connecting to server SSL port by mistake

  If a client connects to SSL port on the server but the client doesn't have SSL enabled, the client would seem to hang until the session times out on the server.

  The client doesn't have a way to tell whether server is expecting SSL or not. If you forget to enable SSL on the client, it will try to connect with regular (non-SSL) session to server's SSL port. The connection will "hang" because both client and server would wait on expected responses from each other.

  To avoid this situation, make sure you set SSL option to "yes" along with setting the TCPPort to server's SSL port.

• Problem with NFSV4 ACL

  In the case of NFSV4 ACL, a change to the standard UNIX permissions will also change the ACLs. Since TSM stores ACLs along with the file data, a change to UNIX permissions will cause a corresponding change to NFSV4 ACLs resulting in the backup of the entire file. You can set the skipaclupdatecheck option to yes to avoid this problem. The skipaclupdatecheck option disables checksum and size comparisons of ACL data. When set to yes (default is no), the Tivoli Storage Manager client will not perform checksum and size comparisons before or after backup and during incremental processing (ACL checksum from previous backup and current ACL) to detect ACL updates. However, current ACL data will be backed up if the file is selected for backup due to other reasons. If only ACLs are updated on a file, the next incremental backup will not recognize this ACL update, and the file will not be backed up.

• Journaled limitation

  On AIX, it is possible to create path names greater than the defined limit (1023). The journal will not detect any changes when the path name is greater than the limit, and, therefore, an error message will not be generated.

• EFS keystore password

  On AIX 6.1, if the EFS user keystore password is different from the user login password, the
  EFS keystore is not automaticaly opened when the user logs in. In such a situation, the backup-archive client fails to restore a non-EFS file into an EFS file system. In this case, the user can either launch the backup-archive client with theefskeymgr -o command or synchronize the keystore password with the user login password with the efskeymgr -n command.
  For example:

  efskeymgr -o ./dsmj
  efskeymgr -n
  
  
• Snapshot-based image backup of file systems or logical volumes in a big or scalable volume group
  
  The backup-archive client will fail to perform snapshot-based image backup of two or more file systems or logical volumes in parallel for a big or scalable volume group. It is an AIX OS limitation. To avoid this situation, run snapshot-based image backups for big or scalable volume groups sequentially, ensuring that the first backup is complete before starting the next one.
  
  For example avoid invoking image backup as follows:
  dsmc backup image /fs1 /fs2 /fs2
  
  This problem will be fixed in an upcoming AIX maintenance level with the APAR IZ74114.
  
  
  
• During the restore of NFS file systems, the client can fail to change modification or access time of the directories. The following message might be displayed:
  
  ANS4007E Error processing 'directory name': access
  to the object is denied
  ** Unsuccessful **
  
  

AIXGPFS known problems and limitations

• When using the TSM Hierarchical Storage Management Client:
  • A "umount" of a managed GPFS filesystem does not trigger failover.
  • Stubfiles that are restored using the TSM BA client are restored to resident state if the option RESTOREMIGSTATE = NO is set.
• GPFS only: GPFS ACL support has been modified to backup ACL data if a file's change time (ctime) has changed since last backup. This is done so that TSM can accurately detect changes in ACLs and other GPFS extended attributes. A file's ctime will change whenever owner, mode, or ACLs change. When any of these changes occur TSM will backup the entire file even if the file's data has not changed. This is because ACL data is stored along with the file data on the server.
• Due to further changes in GPFS 3.2, the size returned for extended file attributes can be non-zero, regardless of presence of extended ACLs. Such files are processed as if having ACLs.

AIXJFS2 known problems and limitations

• When using the TSM Hierarchical Storage Management Client:
  • If you use the RESTOREMIGSTATE = NO option, stubfiles that are restored using the Tivoli Storage Manager Backup-Archive Client are restored to resident state.