#Diavolo Backup available
5 messages in this thread
Martin,
last night I d/l'ed the Demo version of Diavolo Backup. Very good-looking
UI and a sophisticated tape handling! Well done work!
I backupped the sys HD and an imported remote HD to tapes with no errors
and with a good speed and compression.
But ….
when doing a compare after that, after some time of comparing, this
requester will show up:
Internal Error in Diavolo Reader
File
<some filename here>
out of sync 1
OK
When I hit the 'OK' button, another requester will pop up:
XPK-Packer error
Error Code -5
Error unpacking: Checksum failure
RETRY CANCEL
When I hit the 'Cancel' gadget, finally this requester will show up:
Do you really want to cancel
the current compare operation?
RESUME COMPARE QUIT COMPARE
So at last I hit on 'Quit Compare', and after a hint frame, telling me
that all subprocesses are to be closed, the programm will hang.
The window 'Diavolo device selection: COMPARE' will not close (it is
unrefreshed and the imaginery is blanked out in it's left half), and the
process 'Diavolo' will not be unloaded.
So I have to reboot the machine, when this error occurs. It's very
suspicious that there might be other error conditions which are not
handled correctly by your program. Didn't you simulate all error
combinations when testing the program? If you did, the program would exit
gracefully on any error condition…
BTW, what does the out-of-sync error mean? Can't your program try to
resync? 🙂
Well, here's my config: A2000/1MB, A2091/2MB, A2630/4MB, A3070.
– wkc – … via AP from Hamburg, Germany
Werner,
Out of sync errors always appear if the data stream is missalinged, i.e.
there are additional or missing bytes.
Such an error can only be produced by an error in the SCSI bus or by a
failure of the streamer (quite unlikely).
I understand that you're using a DAT streamer, so a failure of the
streamer is even more unlikely if not impossible. Please check your SCSI
bus. The A2091 is a quite stable controller but nevertheless there may be
a wrong termination or simply an unshielded cable.
Diavolo is very sensitive to reselection problems. As there are two
different tasks working simultaneously with the same SCSI bus (the hd task
and the streamer task), it's essential that the reselection works as
expected or is completely disabled.
I don't think you've encountered a bug in Diavolo itself, because here are
many people who are using Diavolo with their DAT streamers, and with the
latest version there are no known problems yet.
Currently it's not possible to resync. You can, however, restore/compare
the rest of the backup. Simply deselect all successfully processed files
and repeat the process. Diavolo then skips all the previous files.
The lock you've encountered could be an error in Diavolo but could also be
an indirect result of the crash of the SCSI bus (Diavolo tries to open the
SCSI device once more before switching to the Device selection menue). You
can try to break Diavolo while it's working and then it does exit as it
should. If there is an error condition like yours the steps are quite the
same (the main process gets the message to show the error message and
subsequently cancels all subprocesses as it would when you break
manually). Of course, there may be an error in Diavolo, as it is quite
difficult to test all possible error conditions (if not impossible).
Martin Korndoerfer, Bavaria, Germany
Also flying on AutoPilot
Martin,
Thank you for the reply.
No, the C= A3070 Tape Drive is no DAT, but QIC-150. The out of synch
errors will occur on comparing each of several backups I made, regardless
from the destination device being on the same SCSI bus or not. With the
same backup, the block where the compare stops with out of sync, will be
the same on everxy try. When I pause the Program just before it reaches
this block, and then resume operation, the compare will continue without
any error for some other 100 MB, then stopping at another block with an
out of sync condition. Strange…
BTW, Bru (HDBackup) works without a flaw, and Ami-Back also works just
fine (but my version does not restore to remote devices). And UNIX, too,
never reported any errors, using the same hardware.
This thing is special to your program only. When Diavolo locks on that
error condition (window not closed, task not unloaded), it is still
possible to access the streamer and the HD with other programs. So, the
SCSI bus is not locked up by itself or left locked by your program.
I was looking for a good backup routine I can recommend to my customers
and which can be automated (called by, and using the UI of, another
application). But I am disappointed by Diavolo not working with the
vanilla-of-the-shelf and original C= AMIGA equipment. Sorry, because the
backup seems to run really fast like a shot…
– wkc – … via AP from Hamburg, Germany
Werner,
Ah, you're using the C= A3070 streamer…
Ok, I know the streamer and I even know this behaviour. Though I have no
idea where this comes from. It's a unique problem of the Calipper
streamer.
I assume there is an error in the streamer's SCSI bus adaption, which
causes the streamer to skip bytes or insert additional bytes.
That you haven't encountered this problem with other software might be
caused by the fact that they're using a different mode for writing the
tape. You can try to alter the block size or turn the "fixed blocks"
option of.
The fact, that the restoration works fine when you're interrupting the
process is a good proof that the backup itself and the restoration routine
both are ok, and the problem is hidden in the SCSI data transfer.
I'm very sorry, that you're disappointed with Diavolo. It's really
difficult to make the software a) fast b) reliable and c) working with all
available equipment.
Diavolo has proven to be very accurate with almost all streamers,
especially DAT streamer. To make Diavolo working with ALL streamers, I
have implemented the SCSI option dialogue, where you can enable and
disable Diavolo's features. Sometimes a feature of the streamer is
detected by the "check capabilities" routine but does not work reliably,
so you have to switch it off manually. This COULD be true for your
streamer.
Though your streamer may be vanilla-of-the-shelf, I never had one to test
it myself, nor has any of my testers. If you're interested (and if you own
a modem), I'd like to invite you to our betatesting program. You then
could get beta versions in our support mailbox here in munich and the only
thing I would like to get from you would be a detailed bug report with
some debug-information of Diavolo (like it's SCSI protocoll etc.).
Martin Korndoerfer, Bavaria, Germany
Also flying on AutoPilot
Martin,
thank you for your detailled response to my message referring to my
problem with Diavolo and the A3070 streamer.
I'm gonna CMail you about your invitation to join betatesting.
– wkc – … via AP from Hamburg, Germany