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#1 2022-03-19 06:20:21

ttlanko
Member
Registered: 2021-01-04
Posts: 9

'Preparing to execute job'...forever

Hi,
I was running a backup manually with XSI and lost connection to my server. I reconnected, and tried running the job again but now it's stuck at the first step saying 'Preparing to execute job'.
I tried another job and it's doing the same. I've let it run for 20 minutes and it doesn't go beyond that.
Looks like there might be a process stuck. Any idea how to get the job to actually start, without having to reboot ESX?
Worth noting I did search for 'xsi' in the running processes list and couldn't find anything.
Thanks for your help!

Last edited by ttlanko (2022-03-19 06:34:10)

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#2 2022-03-19 14:15:25

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,057

Re: 'Preparing to execute job'...forever

We don't know what your job is, we can only offer you general hints.

The GUI is just a wrapping layer for convenience. Do not pretend to get any vital information from it.
Use the command line to debug your scenario:

./xsibackup --backup "VMs(YOUR-VM)" /vmfs/volumes/backup/your-backup-repository

You will get the output on screen along with any eventual errors.

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#3 2022-03-21 08:32:53

ttlanko
Member
Registered: 2021-01-04
Posts: 9

Re: 'Preparing to execute job'...forever

Thanks @admin !
Now I've figured out that it was the Dynamic Target in the destination that was causing the issue. I was using the 7 day julian rotation naming. I recently changed the destination datastore and it looks like for some reason that naming doesn't work?
I tested with a timestamp instead and that works straight away.

Same problem on another esx host, and same solution worked. I wonder what's different with the datastore that could be causing this.
I was using the julian rotation naming as i use the --rotation option and I'm not sure that works with the timestamp naming.

Thanks for your help!

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#4 2022-03-21 16:57:56

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,057

Re: 'Preparing to execute job'...forever

We just had the same issue posted today by another user.
For some reason some date command (c)ESXi implementations lack the %j (Julian day) modifier, you can easily work that around by using a Unix time stamp %s

./xsibackup --replica=cbt "VMs(vmname)" "root@192.168.1.1:22:/vmdks/replicas/$(( $(date +%s)/86400%7 ))"

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#5 2022-03-28 22:50:33

ttlanko
Member
Registered: 2021-01-04
Posts: 9

Re: 'Preparing to execute job'...forever

Thanks for the update!
I run jobs using the GUI and I'll be honest with you, i'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with the command you sent, or what it actually means...
Thanks

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#6 2022-03-29 10:06:59

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,057

Re: 'Preparing to execute job'...forever

You can't effectively use our software by just running the GUI. The GUI is a helper layer for productivity, it doesn't pretend that you abstract yourself from knowing how to deal with the command line.

In your case, your (c)ESXi version is lacking a date command modifier and you need to tweak that manually.

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#7 2022-03-31 23:37:37

ttlanko
Member
Registered: 2021-01-04
Posts: 9

Re: 'Preparing to execute job'...forever

Well... what an odd answer. No offense, but you can't offer a product (which I paid for), advertise it as having a GUI and then tell me the GUI isn't reliable and I need to be a ESX CLI expert.
You acknowledged I'm not the only one having this issue. I've used the XSI GUI for years, and yes, I rely on it, and it's been mostly working fine. Again, when you say "your (c)ESXi version is lacking a date command modifier and you need to tweak that manually' I have no idea what that means. All I know is that my job was working, then stopped, and neither my ESXi version of XSIbackup version have changed.

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#8 2022-04-01 11:01:18

admin
Administrator
Registered: 2017-04-21
Posts: 2,057

Re: 'Preparing to execute job'...forever

Well, (c)ESXi is what it is, it's a Unix like Hypervisor. It offers a GUI, still that doesn't mean that the OS and the GUI are the same thing. The same is applicable to Windows, Linux or any other OS or system offering a GUI. A GUI is always an abstraction layer by default.

That doesn't mean that our GUI is not reliable, just that you hit a bug in one of the underlying OS components, in this case the date binary that requires that you edit the job file manually.

That in turn requires that you know what an (c)XSIBackup job file is (a bash script), where it is located: <install-root>/etc/jobs/ folder and that you know how to use the vi editor to tweak the job as proposed by our workaround.

We will include the workaround in the GUI, still until we release a fix, the only way you have to sort the problem around is by editing the job.

What we meant in our previous answer is that: if you just use the GUI to create and manage jobs, you can barely access 10% of the possibilities our software offers due to the fact that its very nature is being a command line utility. The GUI offers a basic set of scripted utilities, our software is a tool though, thus you can script your own.

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