MozyPro is a increasingly popular cloud backup application provided by Mozy. And with applications that individuals and businesses heavily rely on, such as backup applications, it can be a nightmare when they go wrong!
In this tutorial we’re going to troubleshoot one of the common problems that users of MozyPro experience. This problem involves MozyPro not actually backing up any files but still showing (and, actually ‘performing’) each backup of 0 files successfully, despite files changing. Please also be aware that MozyPro is also marketed as MyBusinessWorks in the UK – both MozyPro and MyBusinessWorks are, essentially, the same program, so this tutorial applies to both.
Now firstly, most users of MozyPro should notice that there are at least some files to backup at each scheduled backup point. Unless you’re backing up very little or files that aren’t changed regularly only, you’re likely to notice that even a few minutes after backup, new files are showing as pending for the next backup.
Now, you can open up MozyPro / MyBusinessWorks preferences (or click on the taskbar / menu icon) to see how many files are awaiting backup:
If 0 files is showing, this could be an indication that there is a problem with your backups.
However, to verify this we need to look at the logs. You can select the ‘History’ button from the MozyPro preferences pane:
Here you’ll be presented with the logs window with details of all your recent backups:
Now you need to look back at your recent backups – have any failed? Or have any succeeded but backed up 0 files? If you spot one that has, check the backups for the days immediately prior to that, are they also the same? If so, you’ve probably got a database malformed / caching issue.
MozyPro creates a cache of your backups (sometimes fairly extensive), however if this cache becomes malformed (corrupted) it usually means disaster for MozyPro – it can’t fix it or alert you to the problem, because as far as the application is aware, it’s working fine – you just have nothing to backup.
It’s a fairly safe bet that by this point, having analysed your backup history, that you’ve got a problem with the cache / database malformed. There’s no harm in deleting the cache (the only affect is that MozyPro will take a while to scan your files again when it next starts scanning for files – please note deleting the cache does not delete any of your files!) so theres perfectly good reason at this point to delete it but….
If you want to do further investigation to confirm the problem – you can look at the log files. These are in /Library/Logs or you can navigate to them through ‘Console’. Your log should be named either MozyPro.log or MyBusinessWorks.log (or something very similar). You may see other ‘numbered’ logs such as MozyPro1.log or MyBusinessWorks1.log – you can ignore these for our purposes at the moment, these are just the previous logs (‘backup’ logs if you like) that have been created as the logs have been rotated. The current log will not have a number appended on the end.
Look at the current log – do you see any errors? Specifically do you see any errors containing “Failed to get files to backup: database disk image is malformed”. If so, there’s a problem with the MozyPro cache. But don’t worry, this is simple to fix.
Navigate to /Library/Cache/ and delete the MozyPro/MyBusinessWorks folder contents in there. If you don’t like messing around in the /Library/ files then its perfectly fine to use an application such as CleanMyMac and get it to scan the caches and remove at least the entries for MozyPro/MyBusinessWorks.
After this your problems are nearly solved. Reboot your machine and upon the next startup you will notice that MozyPro/MyBusinessWorks is scanning for files – and if you’ve got it set to backup a reasonable amount of files, it’ll like show that it is ‘Scanning Files’ for a fairly long period of time – don’t worry, this is normal, it’s rebuilding the cache we deleted.
After it’s finished scanning the files (and rebuilding the cache) you should notice that everything has gone back to normal and new files are showing awaiting backup (assuming that you do actually have changed files to backup!). Wait for the next backup (or start a manual one) and you should notice that your backups are functioning correctly again.
And voila, you have a working MozyPro/MyBusinessWorks application again! :).
View Comments (8)
We always advise everyone to carry out regular tests on their backup to make sure that they are backing up the right data in the right way and this article is a great reminder that, sometimes, changes or errors elsewhere in your computing environment can have a knock-on effect on your backup. Since this is not an issue that's caused by Mozy, we occasionally have to help customers overcome the rare experience of finding their cache corrupted. If you're a Mozy customer and, during your checks on your backup, you discover that your cache has become corrupted, you can find full details of how to fix it on the Mozy support website. Our current advice to customers is posted here: http://support.mozy.co.uk/support/mozyKnowledgeBase?DocId=112541 Thanks for championing the cause for regularly checking on backups. -- The Mozy Team
Hello Mozy. Welcome to DPS Computing :).
Thank you for your additional advice in your comment - it is much appreciated by ourselves as I'm sure it will be appreciated by our members and readers.
Indeed, we didn't perform specific tests to try and determine the cause of the cache corruption, we only observed that the error was caused by a corrupt cache (and hence provided a solution for this problem). As you have identified, there could be many different reasons and situations that could cause a corrupt cache.
I'm sure customers (ourselves included!) will be happy to hear that you are able to provide assistance in case of this issue occurring and thank you for the link to the relevant knowledgebase article.
We're pleased to note that the advice given in the Mozy knowledgebase article echoes the advice given in this article.
No problem. Thank you for stopping by and commenting - it is much appreciated :).
Hey DPS - My name is Scott, and I'm one of the developers on Mozy's Mac client team. We really appreciate how willing you are to help others who may be running into the same issue that you've encountered.
Do you know which version of MyBusinessWorks/Mozy you're running? Based on the screenshots that you posted, you're probably running a rather old version of our software. Some of our partners (MyBusinessWorks, in your case) don't always update the client software to the latest versions of MozyHome/MozyPro that we release. Most likely, we've already fixed the problem that you've encountered in a newer version of the software (and added more features, improved performance, etc.).
I'll talk to the right people and make sure that we can get a newer version of the MyBusinessWorks Backup client out to you.
Hello Scott. Welcome to DPS Computing :).
That's no problem, we always help out where we can :).
Yes the version of MyBusinessWorks that we are running is 2.1.2.94 - this is currently shown as the latest version of MyBusinessWorks - although I understand the MozyPro client is up to 2.7.0.526 for OS X 10.5+? Yes, it would appear that MyBusinessWorks is quite a bit behind with the releases compared to what Mozy is up to.
That would be very welcome news - as this problem isn't particularly the most easy to solve - and there will be lots of customers out there from non-technical backgrounds who may not be able to solve it at all.
Thank you Scott. That's much appreciated! More features and improved performance would most definitely be welcome :).
Good app by the way - does what it says on the tin! (Apart from this one hiccup that we had! ;) - but I understand that the cache corruption isn't necessarily related to the MBW/MozyPro itself). But if a newer version of MBW/MozyPro is able to detect the cache corruption and rebuild it that would be awesome :).
Thanks for your comment Scott. Look forward to hearing from you :).
Alright, I've got a build of the latest version for you. Here's the link:
https://www.mozypro.com/downloads/MyBusinessWorks-2_7_2_532-42178.dmg
Let me know if you run into any trouble with it.
Hi Scott.
Thanks for the link. It all seems to have updated correctly and is working fine.
Everything seems fine at the moment. Just as a note to anyone that upgrades - straight after the upgrade you get a long time 'Scanning files'. Don't worry, we've found this to be completely normal - its similar to the time taken to rebuild the cache.
I assume that when upgrading to the new version the cache is automatically rebuilt? Maybe you can confirm that Scott?
Anyway, thanks for the update Scott, much appreciated. The new version seems to be more responsive and quick. So thumbs up so far for the new version.
It's scanned all the files correctly and worked out whats changed so that's a good sign. Just waiting to see if the backup goes OK this evening. From what I've seen, can't see any reason why it wouldn't.
But I'll report back on it tomorrow for everyone! :).
Glad to hear that the upgrade from 2.1.2 to 2.7.2 worked as expected (I don't think that we test upgrading versions that far apart very often!). And you're absolutely right about the cache rebuilding when you upgraded; we don't typically require a rebuild when upgrading, but there were probably enough changes to the database schema between 2.1.2 and 2.7.2 that it was necessary.
If you have any questions or run into any trouble with the client going forward, feel free to contact me directly at sclarson@vmware.com.
Hi Scott,
Thanks, yes the upgrade has all gone smoothly! And yes, it was quite a big leap in versions! The newer client seems to be more efficient and generally more responsive so that's good :).
Ah right, yes that makes sense. I am pleased to report that all backups since the upgrade have been successful and the MBW client is performing as expected - no issues whatsoever :).
Thank you Scott, that is much appreciated. Hope you have a great weekend :).