RE: IDS 7.31: Backing up logical logs to disk

We set up a cron job to execute every 1/2 hour and do a logical log back up. Of course there is a window for failure of 30 min. and we have accepted this risk. Plus make sure there are log's available. Wayne E. Martin Informix Database Administrator Kmart Corp. Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2000 8:54 AM To: informix-list@iiug.org Subject: IDS 7.31: Backing up logical logs to disk Hi Informixers, currently I'm using onbar and Legato Networker to backup IDS 7.31 logical logs to tape. This works just great, however I'm afraid that this puts too much strain on my tapes and tape drives. My jukebox has only two Exabyte 8mm 5/10GB drives (I know, REALLY old, but newer equipment is not in our budget), so I cannot reserve one drive exclusively to log backup. Since there is a lot of backup activity especially during nighttime, the tape where the logs go to is frequently unloaded to make room for other backups. When a log becomes full, it is then reloaded and has to be repositioned. I use rather small logical log files (1MB), and they become full and have to be backed up to reuse them about 5-10 times daily during normal database activity. I am afraid that the resulting tape un- and reloading and frequent repositioning may be harmful to my tapes and drives. One alternative would be to backup the logs to disk and have the resulting files backed up with the normal daily filesystem backup. I tried this on another system by setting the LTAPEDEV parameter in onconfig to a filesystem file and editing the "log_full.sh" script to use "ontape -a" as backup command. This works, but the filesystem file is overwritten every time a log becomes full. Of course I could copy this file away every time it gets written, but how do I know which log number it contains? Does anyone have a better solution for this? BTW: I chose to use a rather small log size so the logs will get backed up more frequently. Are there any important reasons for not doing so? Regards, Richard -- +--------------------------+------------------------------------------+ | Dr. med Richard Spitz | INTERNET: spitz@ana.med.uni-muenchen.de | | EDV-Gruppe Anaesthesie | Tel : +49-89-7095-6110 | | Klinikum Grosshadern | FAX : +49-89-7095-6420 | | 81366 Munich, Germany | GSM : +49-172-8933578 | +--------------------------+------------------------------------------+