[AIX] Veeam Agent for IBM AIX: undesired warning during machine backup job

[Parnassus]

Hi all! Veeam B&R 12.3.0.310, managed Veeam Agent for IBM AIX 4.6.0.1772 deployed by the Veeam B&R Server (through an ad-hoc Protection Group created for the purpose) on a IBM AIX host (an LPAR running latest IBM AIX 7.2, os-release 7200-05-09-2445), Backup Job completes successfully despite an annoying Warning popping up:

"Failed to retrieve additional characteristics about the file system [/dev/fwdump]"

Looking at the Job.log for the backup session, it seems that zfslib and vbm throws out respectively: "Failed to get filesystem properties for [/dev/fwdump]" and then the cited SessionLog warning reported above.

Simple question: since the protected host was not setup - on-purpose - with a dedicated logical volume (/dev/fwdump) which, eventually, would have been created in the rootvg volume group and mounted on the /var/adm/ras/platform directory...is there a way to tell the Veeam Agent for IBM AIX to not look for that filesystem avoiding the warning?

Just as reference on the Backup Job including the root / we explicitly excluded this mask /dev/fwdump (but it seems is useless) and we noticed that, as example, the /var/adm/ras/livedump was implicitly excluded by the agent. Should we additionally exclude the /var/adm/ras/platform mask to see that warning to disappear?

[rovshan.pashayev]

Hello Davide,

If you need to keep file system, I would suggest you to use Backup Job Scripts, in order unmount and mount /var/adm/ras/platform, before and after backup, respectively.

This will avoid mentioned info message, which is not warning actually.

[Parnassus]

Hello Rovshan,

currently on the AIX machine's filesystem the situation we have is this one:

Code: Select all

[root@aix]/ # lsfs
Name                  Nodename   Mount Pt               VFS    Size      Options    Auto Accounting
...
/dev/fwdump           --         /var/adm/ras/platform  jfs2   --        --         no   no 
/dev/livedump         --         /var/adm/ras/livedump  jfs2   524288    --         yes  no 
... 

[root@aix]/ # df    
Filesystem    512-blocks      Free %Used    Iused     %Iused Mounted on
...
/dev/livedump     524288    523552    1%        4         1% /var/adm/ras/livedump
...

[root@aix]/ # mount
  node       mounted        mounted over         vfs      date        options      
-------- ---------------  ---------------       ------ ------------ --------------- 
...
         /dev/livedump    /var/adm/ras/livedump jfs2   Dec 27 16:34 rw,log=/dev/hd8 
...

[root@aix]/ # lsdev
L2cache0        Available             L2 Cache
...
hd8             Defined               Logical volume
livedump        Defined               Logical volume
...

[root@aix]/ # platform_dump -l  
Platform dump is not supported on this system.
Directory:                      /var/adm/ras/platform
Save scan dumps:                true

[root@aix]/ # sysdumpdev -l
primary              /dev/lg_dumplv
secondary            /dev/sysdumpnull
copy directory       /var/adm/ras
forced copy flag     TRUE
always allow dump    FALSE
dump compression     ON
type of dump         fw-assisted
full memory dump     disallow

[root@aix]/ # ls -la /var/adm/ras
total 58216
drwxrwxrwt   10 root     system         4096 Feb 18 14:17 .
drwxrwxr-x   17 root     adm            4096 Dec 27 16:34 ..
...
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     system          256 Jun 28 2024  livedump
drwx------    2 root     system          256 Jun 28 2024  platform
...

[root@aix]/ # ls -la /var/adm/ras/platform
total 8
drwx------    2 root     system          256 Jun 28 2024  .
drwxrwxrwt   10 root     system         4096 Feb 18 14:17 ..

We see that the path /var/adm/rsa/platform is available (void) on the filesystem but the /dev/fwdump is not mounted.

[rovshan.pashayev]

Hello Davide,

Can you try to remove filesystem from /etc/filesystems, so it does not appear in lsfs output either.

[Parnassus]

Hello Rovshan, I believe that the rmnfsmnt command is not appropriate for the purpose of removing the /var/adm/ras/platform filesystem stanza from /etc/filesystems, we are going to remove it with the imfs -x -l /var/adm/ras/platform command instead (documented here).

Currently the /etc/filesystems file's stanza containing the reference we are going to delete is:

Code: Select all

/var/adm/ras/platform:
       dev             = /dev/fwdump
       vfs             = jfs2
       log             = /dev/hd8
       mount           = false
       account         = false

I confirm that now, after the change, the Backup Job doesn't report that Warning (all green). Thank you!

[rovshan.pashayev]

Thanks for sharing the result!