Failed to spawn 'plugin name' - Cannot find installed software for the selected plugin name (4045379)

Title: Cannot find installed software for the selected plugin name
Date: 23/11/06
NV Version: N/A
OS Version: N/A
Application version: N/A
Plugin version: N/A

Description: This document describes the general case of the failure to launch a plugin and the steps required to diagnose and resolve this issue.


Symptoms:

Attempting to perform a backup, a restore or even just browsing a client using PLUGIN_NAME (where PLUGIN_NAME is any of the plugins available for installation on a client - such as File System, Raw Device, NetVault Databases, Data Copy, etc) can result in an error message similar to the following:

Failed to spawn PLUGIN_NAME, unable to resolve name of executable
Cannot find installed software for the selected plugin name

OR:

Failed to resolve name of process

OR:

Could not start plugin 'File System' on client machine (19)
Fatal error: Failed to start plugin

In the text below we shall use the File System plugin as the example plugin.

The possible causes for this error are:

1. The plugin binary path defintion is not present or has changed in the programs.cfg file (located in the "config" directory within the Netvault installation folder).
2. The plugin binary has been renamed, moved, deleted, has had its permissions modified or is no longer executable.

It is also possible that the file system that contains Netvault is full on the client so prior to the procedures below it is advisable to check this.


The investigation needs to be done as follows:

If the problem was encountered during a backup or restore procedure then try to browse the client by expanding the client node and double-clicking on the affected plugin. If the browse fails then check ~\config\programs.cfg for the plugin name as displayed within within the backup window. So for the File System plugin you would search for "File System" as this is the text displayed in the browse window. In the case of the Raw Device plugin search for "Raw Device" and so on.

This file is interrogated every time Netvault needs to use a plugin. This file contains sections called stanzas that hold information on the text to display in the browse window and the location of the binary/executable.

If you cannot locate the stanza with the name of the plugin then it is likely that it is not present. The easiest way to get this back is to obtain it from another machine of a similar operating system type. There are always two stanzas for each plugin; one contains information on the trace level, the other contains the path to the actual binary iteself. It is the latter one that is necessary in order to browse and run backups and restores.

In the case of the File System plugin on a Windows client the stanzas looks like this:

[File System:Trace Level]
type=combo
range=ALWAYS,NORMAL,VERBOSE,LIBNORMAL,LIBVERBOSE
width=16
label=File System
Value=NORMAL

[File System]
winnt=bin\nvfs.exe

On a Unix/Linux client the first stanza will be identical, the second one should look like this:

[File System]
unix=bin/nvfs


If the stanzas are present and correct or you have reinstated them and the problem still occurs, then it may be due to a missing binary. Navigate to the ~\netvault\bin directory and establish that the plugin binary is present. You can establish the name of the binary from the relevant stanza. So for the File System plugin on a Windows client the binary is called "nvfs.exe", on a Unix/Linux system this is called "nvfs".

If it is present then check that its permissions are correct (in the case of Windows it must be accessible by the user that is running the Netvault service, in the case of Unix/Linux systems it must have execute permissions denoted by -rwxr-xr-x).

If the binary is missing then it will be necessary to reinstall the plugin. This will insert the relevant stanzas and reinstate the missing binary.

Once the plugin has been reinstalled attempt to browse the client again.

========================================
Version française disponible ID 00003452
Deutsche Version verfügbar ID