Suddenly unable to backup - two different errors
Please bear with me as this has been quite a saga. Yesterday, all acronis backups stopped working with either of 2 different errors. One was Cannot open metadata input/output stream. The other was Access to the file is denied.
Today tried various things in knowledge base articles with no success. These included a repair, then a reinstallation - first reclaiming the jobs (but they didn't work when I tried doing a few) and then reloading the saved configuration.Since then the jobs show no file information.
Did a chat with a rep but have got nowhere. Was told to delete all the jobs that showed the metadata error even though this would mean having to do big jobs all over again and lose all the history. The other error - file one - they wanted to remote into my PC to look at files but I'm afraid I don't let anyone do that. They have given ftp credentials to upload various things with loads of links that I haven't yet had a chance to review.
While in the chat I tried deleting a small job with the metadata error. It would not delete - gave an error that the corresponding file is currently available. Rep told me to turn off protection, stop all the services for Acronis and then try again. Two services would not stop, the Cyber Protection service with access denied and the other saying something about not appropriate, and again the job will not delete.
If created from scratch a job to back up the same folders runs without a problem. But I can't redo all my jobs as, apart from the time it would take to reload them all to the cloud, I would run out of my subscription space. I can't delete any of the old data. I went on the web interface to try it there but it just says it is locked etc and won't delete. Am baffled as to why this suddenly started happening - there seems no way forward as I can't actually back up anything and probably can't restore either. Can anyone help please?
aby,
The behavior you describe suggests that the metadata database is corrupted. To clear the corrupt data and replace that with newly generated metadata you will need to do the following:
- With the application GUI open looking at a Backup screen click to select a failing backup task then right click on that task and select Delete from the resulting menu.
- From the resulting popup box select Remove to remove the task. its settings, and metadata from the GUI screen. (NOTE: this will not delete any backup files from your PC).
- Back to the GUI Backup screen look to the bottom of the backup task list and find + Add backup. Look to the right of that and find the "v" symbol. Hovering your mouse over this symbol will reveal that it is a clickable button. Click on it to reveal Add existing backup and click on it. This will open an Explorer type window from which you can navigate to the location of the backup files from the task you just removed.
- Once you have the backups in view look for a file that is 12KB in size, it should be first in the list. Click on it to select it then click the Add button, bottom right corner to add the backup archive back into the application GUI as a Task. If the 12KB file does not exist just follow the same steps for the first backup file in the list.
- After some calculation the app will add the task back in the GUI and you will notice that the button in bottom right corner of the right pane now says Reconfigure. Click on Reconfigure and make certain that all your settings are as you want them. When finished click on OK.
At this point you will see the task added back in the list and you should see a green Backup now button at the bottom right of the right pane. Click that button to commit your new task, its settings and metadata which will be generated during the backup process.
Thank you for responding - I would love to be able to do point 1. Unfortunately, as hopefully I explained at the top somewhere, I can't delete any tasks either in the GUI or the website. When I click delete, and say Yes, I get 'The backup file is unavailable' in a message box - have uploaded an image here. There is no remove option. Just the option to retry which comes back to the same error message. Also having done a full uninstall including the clean up tool twice before twice reinstalling, wouldn't this have removed any corrupted metadata database?I've been working through my backups today to reconfigure them to see if any still work. Haven't finished yet as they are quite granular, but a few have a different error message 'access to the file is denied' and one has a 'The specified file does not exist' error. The 'open location' option from the right click menu goes to the right place on the server in the web browser, and the server connection check came back all green success messages when run last night.
Just to clarify the backups are all in the cloud. So the backups all appear automatically every time I reinstall the GUI - I have to go into each one with 'reconfigure' to add the folders and the schedule.
Have had no joy with support - have now created a ticket as have got to the end of my tether with the chat side but when I checked it just now, no response has been made and it has been given low priority.
As before, any suggestions gratefully received as the product is almost unusable now. Only two of my original backups still work and I can't recreate all the rest because I can't delete the originals so I won't have enough space to do them all.
aby,
Sorry, I did not understand that your backups were cloud based. Opening a support ticket is your best and only recourse with this unfortunately.
OK, thanks anyway. Unfortunately support aren't getting back to me so am having to look at other backup options.
I should mention by the way that the source files are all on a particular external drive. It is not mapped though - it just uses the drive letter asigned to it by Windows and Acronis is fine with two of the original jobs and with two test ones created since the problem started - which are all on the same drive and in the case of the test jobs are the same files that 2 non working jobs are supposed to back up.
Understood. Cloud issues can only be addressed by support. Keep us posted to any development.
No response to my support ticket raised on 6 Sept. Have had a look at the logs and in backup_worker logs am finding things like this:
10/09/2021 11:33:11:401 AM +01:00 16432 I00000000: Pid: 12220 type=log; level=err; message=cl#1.conn_co#2: failed to read v1_handshake(): -19 (IO request was canceled);
This is despite the fact that when I ran the server connection tool the other day everything came up green with success. However I did query with the support person that there was no file for the server name showing in my Dashboard view. which at the time was showing us4. Today it is showing us2 and that was the file he told me to run.
Other errors include
10/09/2021 11:33:11:827 AM +01:00 16412 I00000000: Pid: 16396 type=log; level=err; message=ar#1: failed to unwrap encryption key 1: set private key or password first;
The ti_demon logs have errors like this:
2021-09-10T11:07:40:613+01:00 4528 E00040014: Error 0x40014: Access to the file is denied.
| trace level: error
| line: 0xaa33a143c434a604
| file: c:\jenkins_agent\workspace\ati-main-win-ati\337\home\backup_worker\impl\backup_worker.cpp:182
| function: `anonymous-namespace'::ReturnCodeToError
| line: 0xaa33a143c434a604, c:\jenkins_agent\workspace\ati-main-win-ati\337\home\backup_worker\impl\backup_worker.cpp:182, `anonymous-namespace'::ReturnCodeToError
| $module: ti_demon_vs_39615
|
| error 0x40014: Access to the file is denied.
| line: 0xc8d8731ce106f9cb
| file: c:\jenkins_agent\workspace\ati-main-win-ati\337\archive\ver3\adapter\error.cpp:61
| function: `anonymous-namespace'::ConvertArchive3Error
| line: 0xc8d8731ce106f9cb, c:\jenkins_agent\workspace\ati-main-win-ati\337\archive\ver3\adapter\error.cpp:61, `anonymous-namespace'::ConvertArchive3Error
| $module: archive3_adapter_vs_39615
2021-09-10T11:07:40:800+01:00 4528 E013C0005: Error 0x13c0005: Operation has completed with errors.
| trace level: error
| line: 0x9f2c53c72e8bcedb
| file: c:\jenkins_agent\workspace\ati-main-win-ati\337\products\imager\demon\main.cpp:741
| function: main
| line: 0x9f2c53c72e8bcedb, c:\jenkins_agent\workspace\ati-main-win-ati\337\products\imager\demon\main.cpp:741, main
| $module: ti_demon_vs_39615
I don't suppose these are universally applicable errors, the encryption key one at least? Bit baffled about the jenkins references which are not to a real directory on my machine. Some of the backups, as in the one above, show the access to the file is denied message but I don't even know which file it refers to. The option in the GUI to open the file location on the cloud works without a problem.
I did upgrade to the latest version of the software hoping it would help but it didn't. It knocked out the community tools because of the change of pathname to the new product name, but I've just seen that an update has been made available so am now using that to view the logs.
Any references to such as Jenkins in the logs are purely internal debugging entries only useful to Acronis development - they refer to paths within their code, not those on the user system.
If creating a new backup task to the Acronis Cloud works correctly but existing tasks ported forwards from ATI 2021 or earlier versions don't, then this is something that only Acronis can fix and that they should have tested & fixed prior to releasing ACPHO on the public! Unfortunately they decided to do no beta testing for ACPHO which would have exposed this type of issue.
Thanks Steve. Got nowhere with support - weeks passed with only the occasional request to upload various things to FTP which they then ignored. Anyway, things spontaneously started sorting themselves out in the past few days. The backups with 'access to the file is denied' or 'cannot open metadata input/output stream' suddenly started working. The remaining ones that previously had 'the specified file does not exist' changed error to 'mismatching backup types'.
I found an article about the mismatching backup types error, which indicated that the scripts needed to be manually edited. I had a look with Notepad++ and discovered that the scripts relating to the ones with the mismatching error all had the name of another backup inserted as the values for computer_name and display_name. When I changed these to match the actual backup name in <display> at the top, these backups promptly worked.
Given that when I followed the original support recommendation on 5 September to completely uninstall Acronis, shut down that machine and try to delete a job on the website interface from a different machine, this was impossible due to an error saying that each backup was locked for data consistency, it seems to me that a process on the server had locked the backups. Something has presumably happened server side in the past few days which removed the lock. It doesn't fill me with confidence about the product that this can happen for some random reason and the support is practically non-existent. Anyway, thought I would update this to say that it seems to be sorted out now.
Aby, thank you for sharing your update - it certainly looks as if Acronis have 'fixed' something at their end on the cloud servers! Glad that you have got your backups running again. If you don't already do so, I would recommend having local backups in addition to those to the cloud. External backup storage drives are relatively inexpensive and provide a good alternative backup approach that you could put away in a safe etc.