Dear solaris users,

I used fssnap(with ufsdump)in the past to backup certain filesystems.
Everything was working fine in the past but now for some weird reason this aint working anymore.

for example

when i run the command

fssnap -F ufs -o bs=/var/tmp /export/home
The virtual device /dev/fssnap/0 is created in a matter of 1-2 seconds
which aint normal as I have a lot of data on the /export/home filesystem

The backing store file /var/tmp/snapshot0 is created.
when I than run fssnap -i , I get the output
0 /export/home

fssnap -i /export/home
0 /export/home

I should get detail information instead.

When i try to backup the virtual device with ufsdump it contains no data.
According to the documentation I do everything correct (and i was working before).

1)the backing store file on /var/tmp is on a different ufs filesystem (/var) as the filesystem (/export/home) that i am trying to backup.
2)There is enough space on the /var filesystem.

Deleting the snapshot give me no errors
fssnap -d /export/home
Deleted snapshot 0.

Syslog is running and the different loging facilities are set to debug. However no information in the logs can be found. Also the /var/adm/messages contains no information concerning the backup.

I have tried things as :
a)enabled all services in smf (just to make sure that i was nothing missing)
b)reconfiguration reboot
b)the fssnap backup with raw and unlink options.
d)tried different filesystems (nfs and ufs , no pseudo filesystems)

Always the same issue Does anyone have a clue what is going on? It is really driving me crazy :/
Thanks in advance!! Anyone who can help is certainly my hero for a month

You don't give your actual command sequence. I use fssnap in the context of backups every day. I wrote a wrapper for Amanda on Solaris 9 that intercepts Amanda's calls to ufsdump, does an fssnap, and then passed that through to ufsdump. Full detail can be found here:

http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Bac...yk.27s_Example

In the call to fssnap, I use the full path, so I don't have to specify ufs, I also capture the output of the command, which is the value that should be passed to ufsdump, and I unlink the snapshot. So,

WHICHSNAP=`/usr/lib/fs/ufs/fssnap -o raw,bs=${SNAPSHOT},unlink ${P}`

where ${P} is the partition to be backed up, ${SNAPSHOT} is where to put the snapshot, and ${WHICHSNAP} is what is then dumped with ufsdump.

I've always found that snapshots are created very quickly. There really isn't that much to do; and, if your system is relatively quiescent (e.g., say, 2am), then not many changes should have to be dealt with in the snapshot after it has been done.

I don't know if any of that will help you. If need be, you could post your exact sequence of commands.

Thank you very much for your reply choogendyk! You have pointed me in the correct direction.
I have made a stupid error.

I must have changed the PATH variable from the user under which the backup runs. I thought that the /usr/sbin/fssnap would be a hardlink to /usr/lib/fs/ufs/fssnap but instead I noticed that it is symlinked to /usr/sbin/clri. Must say that it aint clear for me why they would do that (the symlink fssnap to clri) but everything is working now )

Thanks dude. You are my hero !