[OpenAFS] symantec netbackup on Linux

[Gary Gatling]

Greetings,

Has anyone ever gotten netbackup backup and restore to work with openafs
servers running on Linux? I was able to get restores to work with a 6.0 
and a 5.1 client. But not backups.

In netbackup I have a file selection for my AFS policy that reads 
/vicep[a-z]

I have been able to backup and restore volumes using netbackup 5.1 MP7, 
6.0 MP4, and 6.5.4 clients running on SPARC Solaris openafs servers. 
(openafs version 1.4.11 `cause we just upgraded our servers) But when I 
try with Linux it just backs up the /vicepa directory like its using a 
standard policy instead of using vos commands on volumes like it should.

So it backs up all the funny named files under /vicepa/* and when you go 
to look at the list of what it backed up it opens a dialog saying no files 
match the criteria. The same version of the software on Solaris with 
AFS backups just works ok.

An example, on Solaris it finds 2 files on my fileserver and backups one 
of them which is a volume. (I guess the other is the .backup volume) But 
on Linux with the same basic setup it finds 24 files to backup and they 
are listed as they are backing up as stuff like:

/vicepa/AFSIDat/c=/cJc1U/+/+/=++++2

(So maybe there is some bug in the Linux version of netbackup in the file 
selection mechanism...)

I am using version 6.5.4 on my test netbackup server.

People here want us to get off of SPARC Solaris but since we are stuck 
with netbackup as a backup solution it looks like we might be stuck on 
that platform... Anyone else run into this or find a workaround?

In the Netbackup Systems Administrators guide, volume 2 for 6.0 it says 
that AFS backups are only supported on Solaris 7, HP-UX 11.0 or IBM AIX 
4.3.3. platforms. It does seem to work ok with Solaris 10 even though its 
not officially supported by symantec any longer.

We are running a mix of SPARC Solaris 10 and RHEL 5 in our environment. So 
it would be awesome if there was some way to get AFS backups to work on 
RHEL 5. We already have a several Linux AFS file servers but they only 
hold read only volumes so there is no need to back those up.

I was actually suprised that netbackup 6.5.4 on Solaris worked with 
openafs. Our instructor at the netbackup course told us only old versions 
of the software would likely work.

Thanks,

Gary Gatling      | ITECS Systems
ITECS, BOX 7901   | Operations and Systems Analyst
NCSU, Raleigh, NC | Email: gsgatlin at eos.ncsu.edu
27695-7901        | (5C Page Hall)