Re: Log files to disk

Jake Salomon wrote: > > Kerry Thompson wrote: > > > > Has anyone tried backing up transaction log files to disk, and being > > able to retrieve them later for recovery. Would appreciate any > > experiences, good or bad. > > > > Kerry Thompson > > Kerry, the precise answer is: It depends. > > Informix will NOT support your attempt to use ontape to back your logs > to a disk and then copy them to a tape. However, if you are willing to > struggle through learning to use onarchive, you CAN save the logs to a > disk file, then run another onarchive command to copy the save set to a > tape. You can then restore your logs from the tape-volume save set > (should that be needed). > > As an aside to you non-use of ontape the way you wanted to: Try to copy > a tape volume created by ontape. Use the "dd" command, using the same > block size you specified on the LTAPESIZE parameter. It will encounter > EOF after the control block. Dunno why, but I suspect this is behind > the reason your scheme won't work. > > See'ya on the net. > > -- Jake Salomon I have recently started using onarchive, and think it's dreadful. Because of my problems with it, I asked Informix Technical Support why they don't support archiving/log backups to disk. Apparently many, many sites do it (my previous one did), and there are absolutely no reported problems per se, but a very common experience is that users overwrite archives that they actually needed, and were then complaining about it, hence they won't support it. The configuration of tbtape/ontape makes this inadverent overwriting quite easy. It could happen to anyone - except of course yourself, dear reader. So if you're confident enough that you can avoid this pitfall, go for it! Neil Truby Chase Manhattan Bank Bournemouth, UK