Avamar 7.0.1 - Disabled groups are being reported as failed

Since the last version of Avamar, any clients located within a disabled backup group are now
being reported as "Failed" in the daily  summary. This is good if for some reason you forgot to re-enable a group after a temporary exclusion, but very annoying if you have groups disabled for some good reasons.

This behavior can be change in the mcserver.xml file ( Please be careful ):

1. Make a backup of mcserver.xml just in case.

cp -p /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/mcserver.xml /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/x-mcserver.bak20140923

2. Edit the mcserver.xml file

vi /usr/local/avamar/var/mc/server_data/prefs/mcserver.xml

3. Change this key from true to false

<entry key="report_disabled_client_job_as_fail" value="false" />

4. Restart MCS and the backup scheduler

dpnctl stop mcs; dpnctl start mcs; dpnctl start sched

Avamar error - Error writing 32-byte header to cache file

You most likely have "avtar.exe" process stucks. This seem to be happenning the most often on MSSQL clients.

Kill them, and restarts Avamar services.

Avamar - MCCLI - 1,22801,User login failure.

After running /usr/local/avamar/7.0.1-61/bin/avsetup_mccli for the first time, if you make an error in your setup, it will never go back and update files in your home ~/.avamardata/* correctly.


Fix:

1. delete ~/.avamardata/* OR:
2. manually update ~/.avamardata/7.0.1-61/var/mc/cli_data/prefs/mcclimcs.xml with the correct information.

How to suppress errors and backup exceptions in Avamar Activity and enterprise manager

So you don't want to know about a certain error, or the administrator of that system is not helping you solve this backup problem ?

No problem, just do the following so it will not appear in your "failed" list:

Go to the AVAMAR_INSTALL_PATH\avs\var directory 
Create a file named avtar.cmd

Append the following in it (replace 30901 with the error code you want to suppress):

--downgrade-error-codes="30901"

Avamar Grabage collection troubleshooting

If your garbage collection stop working, you know you are in trouble. Your grid will eventually fill up, and die a slow and painfull death.
Use the following commands from the utility node to try and diagnose the problem:

dumpmaintlogs --types=gc --days=7
In case you see along the lines of "<4203> garbage collection skipped because backups in progres", please verify which nodes are allowed overtime, they are certainly creating problems.

Nodes that are allowed overtime can be seen with:
mccli client show --recursive=true --verbose=true | grep -v "No overtime allowed"


If you'd rather just have garbage collection kill the sessions preventing it from running, just type:
avmaint sched gc --ava --kill=300 --permanent

gc_report
less /usr/local/avamar/var/cron/gc.log

Avamar - How to retrieve all of your grid's serial numbers

Sometimes, EMC support will contact you because your equipment dialed in, and need a part replaced. They will mention a node serial number, so if you have multiples sites like me, here is a useful command to retrieve your grid's serials:

Log in to the utility node:

#> su - admin
#> ssh-agent bash
#> ssh-add ~/.ssh/dpnid
#> mapall --noerror --user=root --nodes=all+ --quiet 'echo `hostname -i`": "`/usr/bin/ipmitool fru print 0 | grep "Product Asset Tag" | sed "s/^.*:\s\(.*$\)/\1/"`'

This will get you the node serial number only.
To get more extensive information, you can try this as well:
#> mapall --noerror --user=root --nodes=all+ --quiet 'echo `hostname -i`": "`/usr/bin/ipmitool fru print 0 " grep "Product Asset Tag" " sed "s/^.*:\s\(.*$\)/\1/"`'

(see solution esg111183 on emc support website) 

Customizing the "Documents And Download" page

Suppose you have windows 2k clients, that needs an older version of the avamar client.

If your are like me and want to keep the file easily accessible, you can simple add them to the "Documents and Downloads" page accessible from http://utility_node_ip by uploading the client to the utility node.

Simple use "winscp" or any other tool to transfer the file, and upload them to:
/data01/avamar/src/downloads/


For example, if I want to add the client under Windows 32 bits, I'll place the executable here:
/data01/avamar/src/downloads/WIN32/AvamarClient-windows-x86-4.1.106-27.msi

That's it, simply reload the page and you will see the client appear.