How to have ClearCase diagnose opslog gaps in Multisite

Question

Can ClearCase's multitool help me fix an opslog gap in a multisite environment? I can't find anything in the man page.

Answer 1

ClearCase Multisite is a fragile thing, mostly because it doesn't seem to retry packets when they don't transmit correctly due to network issues. When that happens you can wind up with opslog gaps, or gaps in contents of a vob that prevent a sync packet from applying. When that happens, multitool can tell you how to fix it. On the host where the sync packets that won't apply are located, use this command:

multitool syncreplica -import -receive -diagnose

Multitool will analyze the issues it finds and suggest what options to include in a syncreplica command to fix them, and which host and vob you need to be in (in a view) for it to work correctly.

The -diagnose option works on v7 and v9 of ClearCase (and possibly v8 too, but I can't verify it), but it is not documented in the man page, only on the documentation on IBM's website. A pity, because this is a VERY useful option that saves quite a bit of aggravation deciphering error messages.

Answer 2

but it is not documented in the man page

It seems documented (indeed on IBM, not on jazz.net) with syncreplica:

–diagnose

Identify missing packet dependencies. If no missing oplogs are detected, no output is displayed.
If missing oplogs are detected, then this option indicates the oplogs that need to be be re-exported

Diagnose all packets in the shipping bay to determine if there is a gap in the oplogs that causes the host to fail to import packets.
In this example, oplog 300 of replica tokyo_hub is missing at the importing host.

multitool syncreplica -import -diagnose -receive
Suggested Export Replica "tokyo_hub@/vobs/dev" multitool syncreplica  -export -endrange -oprange tokyo_hub=300:300 boston_hub