Over the years I’ve been forced to come to one key conclusion about the NetWorker ‘tmp’ directory and NetWorker upgrades.
While it’s not stated in any upgrade documentation, and in theory it shouldn’t matter, anyone upgrading their NetWorker server software should, as a matter of course, delete the server’s NetWorker ‘tmp’ directory prior to starting the new version of the software.
If you’re not familiar with this, you’ll find it:
- On Unix/Linux platforms as: /nsr/tmp
- On Windows platforms in the NetWorker install directory, as “Legato\nsr\tmp”.
This directory contains a plethora of files, some relating to savegroups, some relating to operations – in general ‘tmp’ is almost a poor choice of nomenclature for it: I like to think of it as a ‘state’ directory instead.
Nine times out of ten, or perhaps even 49 times out of 50, if I do an upgrade of a NetWorker server and forget to delete the ‘tmp’ directory, what can only be described as weird stuff will happen within 72 hours. Groups may not finish. Media may not unload. Libraries may forget state. The mouse on your desk may spontaneously quantum ooze to the floor. You may hear the Twilight Zone theme music playing in the background when it should be entirely quiet – that sort of stuff.
So, if looking for a new rule to follow when upgrading NetWorker on your server, please make sure you delete the NetWorker ‘tmp’ directory. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and hassles.
(Note: Deleting the NetWorker server ‘tmp’ directory prevents any backup that previously failed or was stopped from being restarted after the failure – it will need to be started as a whole new operation.)
