Problem

STATUS CODE 249: When performing a backup of a client with NetBackup, the backup job completes with Status 249.

Error
EXIT STATUS 249: The server timed out while waiting for the client to finish sending the file list, or a sequencing problem occurred.

Solution
Overview: The backup of a client performed with Veritas NetBackup (tm) completes with Status 249: "The server timed out while waiting for the client to finish sending the file list, or a sequencing problem occurred." This can happen for Windows or UNIX backup jobs. Troubleshooting: A timing issue has been discovered which can occur when backing up clients using TIR (True Image Restore) With (or without) Move Detection. Log Files: The client process does not backup what are referred to as "socket special files". It makes a note of each socket special file which it skips. bpbkar log example: 13:45:06.248 [26550] <8> bpbkar process_file: WRN /var/mqm/ipc/FILE/@qmpersist/spipe/pmpipe is a socket special file. Skipping. The client process passes the full list of socket special files to bpbrm on the media server - which in-turn passes the list to bpdbm. bpbrm log example: 16:05:25.986 [28567] <2> logconnections: BPDBM CONNECT FROM 10.159.0.44.37954 TO 10.159.0.51.13724 16:05:25.990 [28567] <2> db_end: Need to collect reply 16:05:25.991 [28567] <4> bpbrm main: from client appserver.domain.com: TRV /var/mqm/ipc/FILE/@qmpersist/spipe/pmpipe is a socket special file. Skipping.

bpbkar from client

<4> bpbkar: INF - bpbkar exit normal <4> bpbkar: INF - EXIT STATUS 0: the requested operation was successfully completed <16> bpbkar: ERR - read server exit status = 249: the file list is incomplete

<4> bpbkar: INF - setenv FINISHED=1

Resolution: The timing issue involves contention for the bpdbm process between bpbrm and bptm. The result of this contention is that bpdbm is processing a long request from bpbrm and the request made by bptm times out before it is fulfilled. In the example above, a quick search through the bpbkar log shows a list of 28,662 'socket special files'. It takes bpbkar about 2 minutes to pass the list of files to bpbrm over the single established socket. However, In the bpbrm log, it can be seen that after 5 minutes, it only transfers a list of 9,321 files to bpdbm before the timeout is exceeded and the Status 249 is generated. The bpbrm process needs to open a unique socket to bpdbm for each 'socket special file' notification. This takes significantly more time then bpbkar takes, which uses the single established socket. The solution to this is to create a touch file on the master server to adjust the timeout threshold. By default, the timeout parameters are 5 retries with a sleep interval of 60 seconds. This default can be adjusted with the introduction of a touch file called "FFREADtries". The location of the FFREADtries file for: UNIX: /usr/openv/netbackup/ Windows: ...\veritas\netbackup\. Once the file has been created, values can be added to adjust the default settings. For instance 20 60 can be added to make it have 20 tries with a sleep interval of 60 seconds. Example: