Replica incarnation is old

Differences in the replica incarnation can prevent syncreplica –import command at the importing replica from completing its operation properly.

The following error can occur during packet import:

Error: Replica incarnation for "REPLICA_NAME" is old: old-timestamp
should be new-timestamp

The replica incarnation is the last time the replica was restored (with the restorereplica command). The incarnation is set to 0 when the replica is created and remains 0 until a restoration occurs.

Each replica keeps a record of the incarnation of each other replica in its family. During packet export, the incarnations of the target replicas are recorded in the packet. The syncreplica –import command at the importing replica checks the incarnation in the packet. If the incarnation in the packet is earlier than the importing replica’s own record of its incarnation, the packet is not imported.

If the incarnations are different, the exporting replica does not have a record of the importing replica undergoing restoration. This situation may occur for the following reasons:

The update packet was created before the restoration information arrived at the exporting replica.
The restoration information was not sent to the exporting replica. For example, consider the following synchronization setup:
Replicas A and B synchronize every day, replicas B and C synchronize once a week, and replicas A and C synchronize once a month.

Replica A is restored from backup and the administrator runs restorereplica. Because replica A’s last synchronization was with replica B, the administrator optimizes the process to require an update packet only from replica B. After the packet is received from replica B, the restoration is complete and replica A resumes normal synchronization.

Because neither replica A nor replica B synchronized with replica C during the restoration process, replica C does not have any information about the restoration, and its record of replica A’s incarnation is not updated.

The next time replica C sends an export packet to replica A, the incarnation in the packet is earlier than replica A’s actual incarnation, and the import fails.

To determine which reason applies to your situation:

At the exporting replica, display the incarnation time for the importing replica.
```
cleartool dump replica:name-of-importing-replica@VOB-tag
```
In the output, look for a line beginning with incarnation=. This line displays the incarnation time. For example:
```
cleartool dump replica:boston_hub@/vobs/dev
...
incarnation=01-Apr-02.22:40:54UTC
...
```
Compare this value to the value in the import error message.
- If the values are the same after you adjust for time zone differences, the packet was created before the exporting replica received the restoration information. Delete the packet and follow the instructions in Recovering from lost packets.
- If the values are different, contact Support.