Recovering from an aborted NetWorker saveset using SSID recover

Recovering from a failed saveset isn't usually recommended, but sometimes you may get into a situation where the only location for the data that you need to get back is on an aborted saveset. If the saveset and/or media is completely offline, you're option is to perform a recover using the scanner/uasm process, but if it was just a case of a failed backup, you can direct a partial saveset recovery using the recover command.

Procedure

  1. First of all find the aborted saveset id (SSID) using the mminfo command,
  2. Use the recover command from the client to perform the recovery:
    recover -s backupserver -d path -iN -S ssid
    where:
    • backupserver - backup server from which you want to recover files
    • path - where you want to recover the files
    • -iN - specifies the default overwrite response
    • ssid - id of the aborted saveset
  3. When the recover process runs, you'll get the usual file-by-file listing of the files being recovered, but the recovery will end with what looks like an error
    4096:recover: Unable to read checksum from save stream
    
    16384:recover: Encountered an error recovering /data01/updates/networker-licensing-overview.odx
    
    53363:recover: Recover of rsid 327683276 failed: Error receiving files from NSR server `schlumpf'
    
    The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.
    
    Received 1061 matching file(s) from NSR server `schlumpf'
    Recover errors with 1 file(s)
    Recover completion time: 6/18/2010 10:49:27 AM
    
    
    and at last will give error for the files which are in transit at the time of abort. Hence we can recover from the aborted save set up-to the file which got successfully backed-up.

Conclusion

Using this method we can also recover files using the specific SSID for the recovery only, such as recovering the incremental backup for that backup only.

At that point, you know that you've got back all the data you're going to get back, and you can search through the recovered files for the data you want.