Re: How can a client name change?
Subject: How can a client name change? From: "David Ross" [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2001 08:14:04 -0500 I use a Mac to backup a Dell PIII to a DAT drive. (This was an evolution, not a new setup.) Yesterday I realized that the backup wasn't working because the name of the PC had changed from "Dell PIII Accounting" to "111ES" about a week ago. Any ideas as to what could have done this? And the odds of intentional action by the direct staff are quite low. The machine is on the internet via an ADSL line through IPNR on a 7100. No ports are mapped to the Dell. And email isn't used on the Dell. Only surfing. So are there any reasonable accidental ways this could have happened. Could it be a virus picked up via surfing? TIA I'm having this problem too. Irena Solomon from Dantz contacted me about this, but they are unable to duplicate this on their end. I'm primarily seeing this with Win9x laptops. I'll originally give the Retrospect client a name like computer@room number where computer is the "machine name". The machines will back up successfully for weeks, then all-of-a-sudden, the Retrospect client will rename itself to computer. This happened to about 20 computers (all Win9x computers). This also just happened the past week when I updated a laptop from Win98 to WinME. Immediately after I did this, the client was renamed. Nobody at Dantz that contacted me has any real idea why this is happening (I sent them the logs to show that at no time did the Mac program do the renaming -- it was pretty clear that this was something happening on the client end.) I've since gone to the practice of making sure the client name is the same as the computer name and it hasn't happened since. FWIW. - Steve -- Steve Maser ([EMAIL PROTECTED])| Thinking is man's only basic virtue, Systems Project Coordinator | from which all the others proceed. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering | -- Ayn Rand -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Search: http://www.mail-archive.com/retro-talk%40latchkey.com/ For urgent issues, please contact Dantz technical support directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 925.253.3050.
VXA tape trouble and warning
I am having troubles with my VXA tapes and thought I'd pass on some signs, symptoms and a warning. The warning: Don't powercycle the VXA drive with a tape in it. Ecrix confirms that one is *likely* to destroy or lose some header information and the tape *may* then be recognized by RS as ERASED. There is no way to recover the umpteen gigs of info that are already on the tape at this point. Let me hear you all say redundant backups three times real fast right now! The trouble: Lost communications between the computer and the VXA drive. Backup will stall in the middle for various reasons (client dropped off the network, 519 errors, slow response...). RS will still be trying to run the backup and I've been able to stop the backup. Upon starting any backup to the tape at this point, the VXA drive is unrecognized (no SCSI drive recognition while RS scans the bus). I then restarted the computer, and powercycled the drive (tape still in it, as it wouldn't eject using the front panel). Tape is now unrecognized by RS and is listed as "erased" when it is inserted. Neither RS nor ECRIX have any solution (they reviewed the RS log files and their own log files from the drive), although ECRIX said they thought RS was working on communications problems with the drive, this was not confirmed by RS support. Haven't solved the communications problem yet, but if anyone has suggestions, I'm looking for answers. Suspects are SCSI cables (easy to check, just haven't traded them out yet). System: beige G3, MacOS 9.0.4, RS 4.3, external VXA on built-in SCSI bus with a CD-R following it on the same bus (cables are all short). -- Bob Durst Note my new e-mail address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please update your address book to reflect the change. Visit my web site: http://fst.orst.edu/bob_durst/ -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Search: http://www.mail-archive.com/retro-talk%40latchkey.com/ For urgent issues, please contact Dantz technical support directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 925.253.3050.
Re: VXA tape trouble and warning
I've reset DDS-* drives by holding down the eject button for 5 seconds to soft reset the device. Can the same be accomplished on these drives It might save your tapes. I am having troubles with my VXA tapes and thought I'd pass on some signs, symptoms and a warning. The warning: Don't powercycle the VXA drive with a tape in it. Ecrix confirms that one is *likely* to destroy or lose some header information and the tape *may* then be recognized by RS as ERASED. There is no way to recover the umpteen gigs of info that are already on the tape at this point. Let me hear you all say redundant backups three times real fast right now! The trouble: Lost communications between the computer and the VXA drive. Backup will stall in the middle for various reasons (client dropped off the network, 519 errors, slow response...). RS will still be trying to run the backup and I've been able to stop the backup. Upon starting any backup to the tape at this point, the VXA drive is unrecognized (no SCSI drive recognition while RS scans the bus). I then restarted the computer, and powercycled the drive (tape still in it, as it wouldn't eject using the front panel). Tape is now unrecognized by RS and is listed as "erased" when it is inserted. Neither RS nor ECRIX have any solution (they reviewed the RS log files and their own log files from the drive), although ECRIX said they thought RS was working on communications problems with the drive, this was not confirmed by RS support. Haven't solved the communications problem yet, but if anyone has suggestions, I'm looking for answers. Suspects are SCSI cables (easy to check, just haven't traded them out yet). -- Todd Williams UCSD ECE Computing Support Group (858)-534-7821 If you ever stop learning . . . perhaps you're dead!!! -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Search: http://www.mail-archive.com/retro-talk%40latchkey.com/ For urgent issues, please contact Dantz technical support directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 925.253.3050.
Re: Ecrix VXA 33/66 tapes with Retrospect
After I saw the series of postings on VXA tape capacity, I thought it would help to get some info to you straight from us at Ecrix. In this email, you'll find answers to these questions: - Which files compress and which don't? - How does Dantz software compression work with VXA? - How does a VXA drive optimize for speed vs. capacity? - What are the factory settings of the VXA drive? - Does the firmware level affect tape capacity? - How do I check my firmware version? - How is tape capacity reported? - How do I check my firmware version? - Where do I get VXAtool and new VXA Firmware? - Does VXAtool run on Mac? - Does the VXA drive use streaming like other tape drives? I hope that this is useful info. Let me know if you have any more questions or comments. - Frank Saab [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ecrix -- - Which files compress and which don't? gif files, jpeg's, mpeg's, mp3's, etc. are pre-compressed and you cannot expect any further compression. Text files, word documents, source code, etc., compress at an average ratio of 2 to 1. Binaries, executables, and system files compress at about 1.4 to 1. - How does Dantz software compression work with VXA? If your files are compressible, turn software compression off and hardware compression on. If the files are not compressible, turn both hardware and software compression OFF. You reset hardware compression with VXAtool. Software compression is set in the Retrospect interface. If you are having trouble setting hardware/software compression, please contact us at [EMAIL PROTECTED] - How does a VXA drive optimize for speed vs. capacity? The VXA drive can run in one of two modes: One optimizes for speed (this is the factory setting). The other mode optimizes for capacity. If your connection to the drive is slow, use the capcity mode to get the most capacity on the tape. You can reset the mode with VXAtool. - What are the factory settings of the VXA drive? The drive is set with hardware compression on and is set to favor speed over capacity. - Does the firmware level affect tape capacity? VXA firmware older than V21E1E1F (released 04/04/00) does not let you select speed versus capacity optimization. With the newer firmware, you can use VXAtool to reset this option. The latest version of firmware is V2959 released 02/26/01. - How do I check my firmware version? You can use VXAtool to check your firmware version. - How is tape capacity reported? Almost all storage hardware manufacturers (including Ecrix) use the IEEE method of reporting capacity, where one GB is 1000 x 1000 x 1000 bytes. Retrospect software uses a different method, where one GB is 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes. Because of this, the maximum capacity that Retrospect will report on a VXA 33 GB tape is just over 30 GB, which is almost 33 GB by the IEEE method. - Where do I get VXAtool and new VXA Firmware? They are available from http://vxa.com/support - Does VXAtool run on Mac? VXAtool is available in different versions for Mac, Linux, Windows, and DOS. - Does the VXA drive use streaming like other tape drives? VXA drive is the first tape drive that does not use streaming. Its packet format lets it work at variable speed. This avoids shoeshining/backhitching, which are detrimental to the drive and to the tape. We have videos explaining this in more detail at http://vxa.com/vxa and http://vxa.com/tour I hope that this is useful info. Let me know if you have any more questions or comments. - Frank Saab [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ecrix
Re: Encryption protection
On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, Todd Reed wrote: I understand from the replies here that SimpleCrypt isn't secure, at least in the sense that with enough time the encryption scheme can be defeated. That's true for any scheme if you have infinite amounts of time and computers. What I'd like to know is a realistic assessment of its insecurity. Dantz is saying it is secure enough for the majority of commercial uses. Is the average script kiddie going to find SimpleCrypt easy t I wouldn't believe that claim unless I saw the source for their algorithm (not that I could review it but a thorough peer review would be necessary to say the least to backup the claim - no pun intended). Since 56-bit DES is pretty easy to crack (it took all of three days on distributed.net a few years ago and dedicated hardware is now available for that job), and SimpleCrypt is an unpublished proprietary algorithm, it logically follows that SimpleCrypt is also simpler to crack. I'm curious about the DES encryption actually - it doesn't seem to matter if I have encryption turned on or off - backups seem to take approximately the same amount of time. What exactly is being backed up: the data stream between client and server, the contents on the tape, the catalog (on disk) or the header on the tape (or any combination thereof)? Basically, Retrospect's SimpleCrypt encryption method is faster than DES, but the tradeoff for speed yields a less robust encryption scheme. Which basically says, to me, that its not very strong at all :) Kevin -- Kevin M. Myer Systems Administrator Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 (717)-560-6140 -- -- To subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archives:http://list.working-dogs.com/lists/retro-talk/ Search: http://www.mail-archive.com/retro-talk%40latchkey.com/ For urgent issues, please contact Dantz technical support directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or 925.253.3050.
