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Veritas NetBackup™ Troubleshooting Guide

Last Published: 2020-09-14

Product(s): NetBackup (8.3.0.1)

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

Note:

The NetBackup support utility (nbsu) has been updated in NetBackup 8.1.1. The previous version of nbsu (renamed old_nbsu) is deprecated and will be removed in a future NetBackup release. Veritas recommends use of the newer version (nbsu).

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 a complete description of nbsu including examples and how to gather diagnostic information to send to Veritas Technical Support, see the NetBackup Commands Reference Guide.
If you have a case ID from Technical Support of the form ########, rename the log files with the case ID number. Then manually upload the files to the Veritas Evidence Server. For additional assistance, see:
http://www.veritas.com/docs/000097935
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 -g command line option to collect only OS and NET commands.

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. Note the following alternate ways to view nbsu error messages:

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

Enter the following:

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

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

The general flow of the nbsu program
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.