IBM Tivoli Storage Manager V7.1 Application Programming Interface (API) known problems and limitations

Answer

Tivoli Storage Manager API known problems and limitations

Contents:

• Common API warnings
• Windows API warnings
• API known problems

• Objects that have been backed up or archived with the V7.1 Tivoli Storage Manager API cannot be restored or retrieved with a previous version API, regardless of the server level. The data must be restored or retrieved by a V7.1 level or higher API.
  
  For more information about Tivoli Storage Manager Server/Client compatibility and upgrade considerations, go to http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?&uid=swg21053218.
  
• A writable log file is required for backup and restore operations. The DSMI_LOG environment variable or the dsm.sys file (on UNIX and Linux clients) or the dsm.opt file (on Windows clients) errorlogname option must be set to a path that the user of the application can write to. If the user performing the backup or restore does not have write permissions to the log file, the process will fail. The TSM API return code for this situation is 106 (Access to the specified file or directory is denied).
  

• When running the client as described in the Tivoli Field Guide "Tivoli Storage Manager Recovery Techniques Using Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE)" you will receive the error message:
  
  ANS1464S Cannot load ICC encryption library
  
  Because the scenarios described in the field guide are not run from a fully installed TSM client, the registry entry indicating the location of the ICC encryption library is not created. Since the recovery scenarios described in the field guide do not involve TSM encrypted files, you can bypass this error by modifying your client options file and specifying the option ENCRYPTIONTYPE DES56. This prevents the client from attempting to load the ICC encryption library.

• API applications will run out of file handles during long running processes

The client code uses a lock file to make updates to the dsm.sys file. The file is named dsmopt.lock. The lock that is placed upon this file is not released correctly. Long running processes will exhaust the number of open file handles supported by the operating system. The number of open file handles can be monitored with the 'lsof |grep dsmopt.lock' command.

Once the limit set by 'ulimit' command is reached, the process using the API must be restarted to free the locks.

Note that dsmc also uses the same locking code. If the 'dsmc sched' command is used, the dsmc process will need to be monitored and restarted as needed.
This limitation is fixed with backup_archive client v7.1.4 (see APAR IT11153)