What are XBSA error messages?

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NetWorker uses a library that implements the OpenGroup standard "X/Open Backup Services API," or XBSA, for all BSM's (NetWorker modules) with the exception of Oracle.

The XBSA library logs information to the file /nsr/applogs/xbsa.messages. This directory must be world writeable because the programs that write to the file may not be owned by root; for example, the Informix backup program onbar uses NetWorker's XBSA library and it must run as the informix user.

Error messages from the library can be controlled by setting the environment variable NSR_DEBUG_LEVEL before executing the NetWorker command that uses the XBSA library. The debugging levels for XBSA are:

       0:  No messages
       1:  System error messages
       2:  Network error messages
       3:  Informational messages
       4:  XBSA API function calls (entry and exit)
       5:  XBSA API function parameters (entry and exit)
       6:  XBSA internal function calls (entry and exit)
       7:  XBSA internal function call errors
       8:  XBSA internal function parameters (where implemented)

System error messages are things like "can't open file," etc. Network erorr messages includes RPC, RAP, or other messages from the server.

At level 5 you will see all the data that is used to perform the backup or recover of an object. The logs will fill up fast, as there is a lot of data being written. At level 8, look out! You will get megabytes of data in a short period of time. In any event you will need a big window to view the log as the lines are very long.

Windows users: use wordpad to view the log. Wordpad correctly handles unix-style line termination used in the log file.

If you need to change where the library logs data (for more disk space, perhaps), set the NSR_DEBUG_FILE environment variable to a path and filename.

Probably the most common error message you will see is BSA_RC_ABORT_SYSTEM_ERROR. This is the catch-all error to which most other internal errors must be promoted in order to conform to the XBSA standard. With logging on at level 4, however, you should be able to see the error being changed by searching for messages like:

changed result code from STRING (VALUE) to STRING (VALUE)

For a complete list of all required XBSA error messages and their values, search the OpenGroup web site for the XBSA specification. Note that this is the final version of the specification, and NetWorker implements the Preliminary Specification from which the final was produced and there are some differences.