Troubleshoot Cloud Backup Basic on Linux servers

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Note: If your server is running a Windows® operating system, see Cloud backup troubleshooting on Windows.

This article assists with issues that customers are experiencing when Cloud Backup issues are caused by the backup agent being disconnected on the Linux® instance, including the following problems:

  • Backups have not been running.
  • Backups are taking too long.
  • Cloud Backup is taking up all of the server’s resources.

As a Managed Infrastructure customer who administers your own servers, this article helps you diagnose if the server is experiencing an issue that you can remedy, or if you should escalate the issue to a member of Rackspace Support.
This article provides instructions with helpful information that you can use to troubleshoot the issue or include in a ticket when you create one.

Check for open issues

Before you restart the DriveClient service, check status.rackspace.com to ensure that there are no open issues for Cloud Backup that could be impacting your server instance. In addition, check the current support tickets to ensure that there has not been an incident that is causing the lack of server accessibility.

To check for open support tickets, log in to the Cloud Control Panel and click Tickets > Ticket List in the top navigation bar. If there is no open support ticket about the server in question, proceed with the troubleshooting steps in the next sections.

Establish a connection

Use the following steps to establish a connection:

  1. Log in to the Cloud Control Panel.

  2. In the top navigation bar, click Select a Product > Rackspace Cloud.

  3. Select Backups > Systems.

  4. From the list of Cloud Backup systems, click on the backup server name.

    This action displays the following details about the backup system:

    • The Internet Protocol (IP) address of the server
    • The system type
    • The server region
    • If encryption is enabled
    • The backup region
    • The agent version
  5. To the right of the system name, review the status of the backup agent.

    The backup agent status is either connected or disconnected.

  6. Wait 10 seconds to ensure that the status is accurate because it can change
    after a few seconds.

  7. After 10 seconds, perform one of the following actions:

    • If the status is connected, try to run the backup again, and if it
      fails, contact Rackspace Support.
    • If the status is disconnected, restart the DriveClient service as
      shown in the next section.

Restart the DriveClient service

Use the following steps to restart the DriveClient service:

For CentOS 6 based systems 1a. For CentOS® 6, log in to the server with a terminal and run the command service driveclient restart.

2a. Ensure that the driveclient is set to start at boot by running the command chkconfig driveclient on.

For CentOS 7 based systems and above 1b. For CentOS 7 and above, log in to the server with a terminal and run the command systemctl restart driveclient.

2b. Ensure that the driveclient is set to start at boot by running the command systemctl enable driveclient.

  1. Return to the Cloud Backup System Details Status in the Cloud Control Panel to check that the agent status is now connected.

  2. Follow these steps based on the status:

    • If the status is connected, try to run the backup again, and if it fails, contact Rackspace Support.
    • If the status is disconnected, download the log from the server that is located at /var/log/driveclient.log. (For assistance with downloading a file locally, check out this helpful article).
  3. After saving the file, attach it to a support ticket to send to Rackspace Support. This assists in expediting the issue response.