Re: [Summary-Talk] Retrospect and Summary

[Jason Linhart <jason@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 7/16/04 6:39 PM Kerry (kerry@pmtads.com) wrote:

>You mentioned in a earlier post that you had reports of retrospect causing
>summary to stop serving pages which happens to me every night.
>I was just curious if there was anything more known about this issue?

Not really. This problem has proven very elusive. It will appear 
consistently on some machines, only to vanish when we attempt to 
duplicate it on another machine, suddenly be fine for months, only to 
reappear later. The problem can sometimes occur without Retrospect. 
Running Retrospect doesn't automatically cause problems, though it does 
seems to increase their frequency.

I have never duplicated this problem here, despite doing things like 
restoring full machine backups of machines having consistent problems 
onto an identical model machine here.

So far this problem has only occurred on OS X, consistently going away if 
the configuration is switched to a Linux machine. It also involves 
symptoms, such as a reboot of the machine solving the problem for a few 
days, that are suggestive of a bug in OS X. But I have as yet been unable 
to create a repeatable case for submission to Apple technical support.

Uninstalling and reinstalling Retrospect solved the problem for one 
person. Replacing RAM solved it for another. Raising the number of vnodes 
solved it for several people. But all of these solutions have also failed 
to help others. I know that some machines have been having vnode 
problems, as that has proven very repeatable on those machines. I also 
know that some machines have had problems with marginal RAM, again as 
that as proven very repeatable on those machines. But other setups have 
had identical problems and raising the vnode limit or changing RAM has 
had no effect.

Jason

-----------------
Jason@Summary.Net
-----------------
Dr. Seuss books . . . can be read and enjoyed on several levels. For
example, 'One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish' can be deconstructed
as a searing indictment of the narrow-minded binary counting system.
  -- Peter van der Linden, Expert C Programming, Deep C Secrets
-------------
Go to <http://summary.net/list.html> to update subscription info.