Binding Retrospect Client to a Specific IP

So we had a power failure last night, which is annoying but it allows me to make sure our restart procedures (bringing up the home servers, etc.) are automatic. Seems like every time it happens, though, I discover one little thing I forgot since the last failure, and I still have to go in and restart something by hand.

This time, it was one of the Linux boxen's Retrospect client.

The client came up but it was confused since the VMWare instance had two network adapters, and it bound to both, thus seriously confusing the Retrospect server.

Simple solution, thanks to EMC/Dantz's Web forums, and "Gold Club" poster "waltr":

retroclient -ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

note that you'll want to put this in the RCL script so that it sticks across reboots, like this:

$CLIENTDIR/retroclient -daemon -ip xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx



Which I did, and all is good now! Hopefully this will be the last change I have to make for a fully automated restart next power outage, which, knowing PSNH, will be in a few days.

(Kidding! I kid! Please don't cut my power.. :-))

Comments

Anonymous said…
hi. so binding retrospect to an ip address means telling the client to bad accessed by server at that ip address, as opposed to telling the client where the retrospect serve is? correct?

my linux client keeps giving me the error of client reserved or not seen in network, etc. but i have other linux clients that don't give me this problem.
Unknown said…
No, it's like this.

If your client machine has two (or more) IP addresses, either virtual or physical, the Retrospect client won't know which one is the correct network interface to listen to on startup unless you tell it. That was my problem.

Binding the client means that the Retrospect client application will listen to a specific IP address, the one you tell it to.

It's not telling the client about the server, nor telling the server about the client.. it's just ensuring that on a multi-homed machine, your Retrospect client is listening on the correct subnet.

Your problem could be this one, since your Retrospect client could be listening on the wrong subnet and thus, your Retrospect server can't find it.

I hope that helps clarify things a little..
Anonymous said…
Thanks Marc,

Your explanantion was perfect. Much appreciated!

-Felix