Failing Backups and DST Woes
This week I worked on a two day introduction to SharePoint with a new client. The goal was to install and then give them a quick tour of the features with emphasis on Excel services. We completed the install on the first day and did a backup in preparation for the following days exploration.
The following days we covered a lot of ground and then to wrap up I was going to do some backups and show them how to use the Central Admin Backup. I selected backup and full farm and then waited for the job to show up, refresh, refresh…..refresh... where was my backup. I deleted the job and tried again
same thing. We checked the database permissions and folder permissions - everything seemed fine - backup had worked the night before.
I decided to the run backup by command line using stsadm - success - the backup began and then stopped or hung during the search database backup. I waited - but it did not complete. Last line displayed was
[Shared Search Index] 50 percent complete.
Since we had configured search in the morning - I now understood why the backup completed the day before. At this point my client and I hit the web and started searching for information.
He came up with this - http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2403806&SiteID=1
This led us to a Hot Fix from Microsoft - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934525
Our timer job was delayed by an hour - 938663 One-time timer jobs in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or in SharePoint Server 2007 are delayed by at least one hour when the jobs are scheduled to occur during daylight saving time (DST) .
We installed the hotfix and ran the backup again using stsadm - after a few tense moments the backup completed. We then tried from the Central Administration interface - the job showed up and completed.
Backup fixed!