Running Hotcopy on NAV 5.0 after hours not working

JTD121

Hey all,

Newbie to these forums, but not to forums in general.

Sorry for the linking but here's a thread about it.

Basically the TL, DR version is, I have tried everything suggested and that I could think of to make this work as a scheduled task, and it always either errors out, or just stops and logs an esoteric error to the Event log.

Any ideas?

Thanks for any help you can give. If linking to a previous thread on ANOTHER forum is against some rule, I will copy and paste. No problem, but I've already written it all out and wracked my brain for months already since we migrated to NAV 5.0 at a client.

-Josh

kine

In your post you are mentioning:

This server is only running Navision 5.0 and I think MS SQL. Not sure on the function of the SQL setup, though. Whether related to NAV (as in it is the DB), or just for something else on the system.

Base thing is: Hotcopy can be used just with Native server. It means you need to be sure, that the MS SQL is not used for NAV. If it is, you cannot use hotcopy but the MS SQL backup tools. But I think that you will get some clearer error when you will try to connect hotcopy to nonexisting NAV Native server... :-k

Poltergeist

@Kine: I think he's running native, considering the fact there are 4 FDB files.

@JTD121: You're stating that the backup does start, but failes after keys are tested. Are you sure there's enough space on the destination drive? The old databasefiles will only be removed after a succesfull copy of the database. If your database is 16 GiB, you should have that amount available, even with the former backup on it. Also, files are created after keytesting, so that might explain why you don't see any changes to the already existing backupfiles.

Also, take a look at the NTFS rights (assuming you're using NTFS, but otherwise that might be a problem to). The scheduler's useraccount has to have sufficient rights to the directory to be able to create new files.

You might speed up the testingproces by using dbtest=none in the txt file. Then it should start the backup immediatly.

JTD121

Thanks for the advice, I will answer as best I can.

The only error I have ever see this thing do is: 'Error 2 in Module 1' after testing the keys in the commandline.

In the Event Viewer, there is a different error that occurs at the same time:

Reporting queued error: faulting application HotCopy.exe, version 5.0.24199.0, faulting module HotCopy.exe, version 5.0.24199.0, fault address 0x0001ed24.

I am not sure on whether the database is Native or SQL. My boss isn't entirely sure either, but I think it's fairly safe to think it's Native. MS SQL Server is installed on the machine, but I am not sure as to why, or for what program(s).

We have more than enough space on the disk (local) we are backing up to. It's a 500GB drive. I'm also damned sure we are using NTFS, does Win2003 even support making FAT32 partitions?

Will certainly check the NTFS permissions, and the key testing. What does the key testing do anyway, besides take more time?

-Josh

themave

one problem I see is

G:\nav.fdb=F:\navbk
H:\nav.fdb=F:\navbk
I:\nav.fdb=F:\navbk
J:\nav.fdb=F:\navbk

all your database parts are named the same, they are on different drives but they have the same name. so the hotcopy would have a problem because it can't create four unique hotcopy files on F:\navbk all named nav.fdb

database parts should be

G:\nav.fdb
H:\nav1.fdb
I:\nav2.fdb
J:\nav3.fdb

you have to recreate the database to rename the parts, and then restore your database into the new database. As a work around until you can rename your database parts you can change your hotcopy file to store each part in a different directory

G:\nav.fdb=F:\navbk1
H:\nav.fdb=F:\navbk2
I:\nav.fdb=F:\navbk3
J:\nav.fdb=F:\navbk4

try also to commit out the dbtest

have it

; dbtest=normal

this will stop the test, to eliminate that from the problem. see if it runs

you should also just run the database test, outside of hotcopy, that will tell you if it has errors, which most databases do.

goto file --> database --> test and try running a complete test.

JTD121

You know, I thought of that. About the db files all named the same. But it seems to have worked at one point.

Doing it manually through Navision itself (the CSIDE client) works fine, and the backup db files are F:\navbk\nav1.fin, ..\nav2.fin, etc.

So I am not sure what's going on with HotCopy. I think I will have to tal kto the upper people that deal with the database before I do anything, as I am their IT guy, but I am not sure how long a DB rebuild and rename would even take, let alone give them an estimate.

But I think I can backup the different drives' DBs to different folders, sure. Will rewrite that now and let it run tonight.

-Josh

themave

JTD121 wrote:

You know, I thought of that. About the db files all named the same. But it seems to have worked at one point.

Doing it manually through Navision itself (the CSIDE client) works fine, and the backup db files are F:\navbk\nav1.fin, ..\nav2.fin, etc.

So I am not sure what's going on with HotCopy. I think I will have to tal kto the upper people that deal with the database before I do anything, as I am their IT guy, but I am not sure how long a DB rebuild and rename would even take, let alone give them an estimate.

But I think I can backup the different drives' DBs to different folders, sure. Will rewrite that now and let it run tonight.

-Josh

also turn off the dbtest, to eliminate that.

you can start a hotcopy anytime, if you don't want to wait till tonight, without doing the dbtest, you will know right away if it will work, it is the dbtest that takes so long.

JTD121

Turned off dbtest (commented out), and made each drive letter a folder so:

G:\nav.fbk=F:\NAVG

And when running through RDC, it doesn't show the command line window at all. It shows that HotCopy's running in Task Manager, but you can't tell what it's doing....Maybe I'll just run from command line...

-Josh

EDIT: Running it from the CLI, and it seems to be working fine. Although 100GB (100,000,000KB) is going to take a while. At 19% now. Will check later, too!

Poltergeist

The dbtest (testing keys et cetera) is a test to check the integrity of the database. You can do that from the client also - just don't do it if people are logged on, it might be a performance killer.

The backup from within the client is totally different from the HotCopy approach. Hotcopy makes a full copy of the database, while the clientbackup only exports raw data, without the - very important, but rebuildable - tables for sift. So this one will be a lot smaller.

BTW: What's RDC?

bbrown

RDC = Remote Desktop Connection

Poltergeist

OK, didn't make that link.

@JTD121: Do you start the Remote Desktop with the Console option? Don't know why that should matter, but I've seen stranger things happen with it...

JTD121

Poltergeist, how would I enable this option? I don't see it anywhere in the RDC options. Maybe it's embedded deep within the menus?

And it looks like it worked just fine! Thank you all for your help! Saved me some time and effort in rebuilding and renaming the DB files.

-Josh

Poltergeist

Go to start->run, type mstsc /console. Now you'll logon to the console of the server, instead of a session.

JTD121

Is there a way to make that a shortcut, the way you can with the normal session-based RDC?

Just curious. If not, that's fine, I'll just try to remember that when I need to use the command line for HotCopy.

-Josh

Poltergeist

Nope, not that I know. But you could make a shortcut and place it on the desktop or something...

Savatage

haven't tried but i guess you can use notepad to creat a little batch file and make a shortcut to the file.

command.com
mstsc /console

?

we do our backups like this
http://savatage99.googlepages.com/MyBackup.pdf
NavBackup Lite is available in the download section

Poltergeist

No need for the command.com (which, by the way, should be cmd.exe, or even better %comspec%). So you can make a shortcut to mstsc.exe, and change the properties...

JTD121

Dumb question, probably nothing.

When we do a backup, which is actually working now, thanks to you guys, it doesn't update the 'Date Modified' property of the files.

So, the folders (NAVG, NAVH, etc), are updated to today (12/4), but the files inside say 11/27. Is this normal? Also, is there a way to make HotCopy log what it does without using NavBackupLite? It doesn't seem to do exactly what we want as yet.

If you need the way we found online, I can post that up, too. Just doesn't seem to work is all.

-Josh

JTD121

Um...Bump? Folders still updating date, but not the files inside. If you need more info, or screens, I will provide as much as I can.

-Josh