Issues with Pre Roll Post and LTFS on OS X

[Cg Coffyn]

I feel your pain. I have a similar setup and I’m guessing you are using the latest Sierra?

I was having a related issue as PRP could not write to those same folders, but originally I was having a problem just getting LTFS to install on our MacPro running 10.12.6. It was a long complicated process trying to get support from Imagine (PreRollPost – they are a small company not able to offer much with support), then trying to work with Quantum. LTFS is installed now and working after way to many hours of fiddling. I’m actually just starting backups to an Quantum LTO5 drive as I write this. BUT I”m not done, so I could still encounter some bugs – so far so good.

So to get PRP to work I just had to tweak a few things. Apparently Apple in Sierra turned permissions off for some areas of the OS like the line you have: 307 LTFS9014E Cannot create work directory ‘/Library/Logs/LTFS’: Permission denied. So I basically went into those files/folders to give them Admin read/write permission. Some higher level folders the OS would not let me, but the folders related to Imagine and PreRollPost were not problem. Eventually I’m guessing that Imagine will need to rewrite some of their software to work around this without users having to work so hard. Quantum will have to do that for their LTFS Manager they told me.

Then for me I had to change the LTFS Mount Details to my desktop (or somewhere with read/write permission) as the default location still could not be written to. Oooops, looks like I’m not quite there as I see there is a space problem (offloading) with the backup. I think this may be my user error, but possibly this is enough to get you going.

I’ll post back when I figure out another tweak. But it is backing up now to the LTO.

[Cg Coffyn]

Update, all is working fine. The software was just telling me that the LTO5 tape was not big enough for the backup. So I just selected to span files over multiple tapes, which we did in our previous software as well, Retrospect.

[Sam Bond]

Thanks Christopher, glad I’m not the only one having problems!

I have somehow managed to get PRP to work and it seems to be fine now. The Quantum LTFS manager is still a bit funny but hopefully Imagine and Quantum can find a way to get it to work perfectly.

Any further developments you have would be great to know!

[Cg Coffyn]

Glad to hear it Sam. Hope all goes well.

This morning when I came in PRP had backed up one tape, but there were 437 verifications errors. This might be my user error, but I’ll need to do some sleuthing to see what’s up.

I purchased PRP last year based on recommendations from two other pros I met at NAB. I was looking to move past Retrospect, which at that time did not support LTFS (it probably still doesn’t). But Retrospect always worked. I think Quantum’s LTFS Manager is too simple, though I only downloaded it, got it working, but never actually did any real tests. It is free.

I will continue with PRP for now. Hopefully I can figure out the problem with the verification errors.

BTW, one option I was told is to run PRP in root. I had to look that up to figure out how to set it up. My initial test didn’t work. Since root is at a system admin level you have permissions for everything. Powerful but kind of scary if I do something wrong.

All the best!