Search <book_title>...

Veritas NetBackup™ 8.0 Troubleshooting Guide

Last Published: 2017-07-13

Product(s): NetBackup (8.0)

About the NetBackup support utility (nbsu)

The NetBackup support utility (nbsu) is a command line tool. It queries the host and gathers appropriate diagnostic information about NetBackup and the operating system. nbsu provides a wide range of control over the types of diagnostic information gathered. For instance, you can obtain information about NetBackup configuration settings, about specific troubleshooting areas, or about NetBackup or media management job status codes.

The NetBackup support utility (nbsu) resides in the following location:

UNIX	/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/support/nbsu
Windows	install_path\NetBackup\bin\support\nbsu.exe

Veritas recommends that you run the NetBackup support utility (nbsu) in the following circumstances:

To obtain baseline data on your NetBackup installation. If you encounter problems later, this data can be useful.
To document changes in your NetBackup or operating system environment. Run nbsu periodically to keep your baseline data up to date.
To help isolate a NetBackup or operating system issue.
To report issues to Veritas technical support.

The following suggestions can help you run the nbsu utility more effectively:

For troubleshooting, run nbsu when the system is in the same state as when the problem occurred. For example, do not stop and restart the NetBackup processes after the error occurs or make a change to the server or network. If you do, nbsu may not be able to gather key information about the problem.
If a NetBackup component is not operational (for example, bpgetconfig does not return information), nbsu may be unable to properly report on the system. For these cases, use the -nbu_down command line option to bypass the need for NetBackup to be operational.

If nbsu does not perform as expected, try the following:

By default, nbsu sends error messages to standard error (STDERR) and also includes the messages in its output files under the header STDERR. Note the following alternate ways to view nbsu error messages:

To redirect the nbsu error messages to standard output (STDOUT)

Enter the following:

UNIX
/usr/openv/netbackup/bin/support/nbsu 2>&1
Windows
install_path\NetBackup\bin\support\nbsu.exe 2>&1

To send all nbsu screen output including error messages to a file

Enter the following:

nbsu 2>&1 > file_name

Where 2>&1 directs standard error into standard output, and file_name directs standard output into the designated file.

To generate the debug messages that relate to nbsu, enter the following:
```
# nbsu -debug
```
The messages are written to the nbsu_info.txt file.

The nbsu_info.txt file provides an overview of the environment where nbsu is run. It contains the following:

General operating system and NetBackup information on the environment that nbsu detects
A list of diagnostics that were run
A list of diagnostics that returned a non-zero status

The information in nbsu_info.txt may indicate why nbsu returned particular values, or why it did not run certain commands.

If nbsu does not produce adequate information or if it seems to perform incorrectly, run nbsu with the -debug option. This option includes additional debug messages in the nbsu_info.txt file.

A complete description of nbsu is in the NetBackup Commands Reference Guide.

More Information

About NetBackup troubleshooting utilities

Example of a progress display for the NetBackup support utility (nbsu)

Output from the NetBackup support utility (nbsu)

Status code information gathered by the NetBackup support utility (nbsu)