Dumb DBA mistakes

Following a couple of conversations with 'new' DBAs in Tampa about dumb mistakes that they made and learnt from the hard way I offered to collate a list of 'dos and do nots' for newbies, I suppose a mini-FAQ of dumb DBA mistakes. Therefore, I'm asking all the great and good on CDI for their pearls of wisdom, anidotes etc. The idea might die of natural causes i.e. lack of interest :-) All dumb mistakes will (probably) remain anonymous Please don't tell me there are no new Informix DBAs, I've trained 8 in the last month, and I've got another 6 in a couple of weeks time - and yes God help them if I'm training them. Cheers Paul Paul Watson Tel: +44 1414161772 Mob: +44 7818003457 GO FURTHER with DB2 GET THERE FASTER with Informix. Attend the IDUG 2006 European Conference. Vienna, Austria. 2-6 October 2006 Visit http://www.iiug.org/conf for more information.

Paul Watson said: > Following a couple of conversations with 'new' DBAs in Tampa about dumb > mistakes that they made and learnt from the hard way I offered to > collate a list of 'dos and do nots' for newbies, I suppose a mini-FAQ of > dumb DBA mistakes. Therefore, I'm asking all the great and good on CDI > for their pearls of wisdom, anidotes etc. The idea might die of natural > causes i.e. lack of interest :-) Don't get trained by Paul Watson. -- Bye now, Obnoxio Information within this post contains forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21B of the S E C Act of 1934. Statements that involve discussions with respect to projections of future events are not statements of historical fact and may be forward looking statements. Don't rely on them to make a decision. The poster is not a reporting company registered under the Exchange Act of 1934. I have received a life peerage from Her Majesty, who is not an officer, minister or affiliate Labour party member. I intend to recover my loan now, which could cause the parliamentary majority to go down, resulting in losses for you. Today's Labour party has: an accumulated deficit and a reliance on loans from officers and affiliates to pay expenses. It is not an operating political party. The party is going to need financing to continue as a going concern. A failure to finance could cause the party to go out of business. This report shall not be construed as any kind of investment advice or solicitation. You can lose all your money by investing in this party.

Obnoxio The Clown wrote: > > Don't get trained by Paul Watson. > And don't add chunks on an HDR primary without having the same device available on the secondary eh?

Clive Eisen said: > Obnoxio The Clown wrote: >> >> Don't get trained by Paul Watson. >> > And don't add chunks on an HDR primary without having the same device > available on the secondary eh? Yeah, Paul taught me that. :o) -- Bye now, Obnoxio Information within this post contains forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21B of the S E C Act of 1934. Statements that involve discussions with respect to projections of future events are not statements of historical fact and may be forward looking statements. Don't rely on them to make a decision. The poster is not a reporting company registered under the Exchange Act of 1934. I have received a life peerage from Her Majesty, who is not an officer, minister or affiliate Labour party member. I intend to recover my loan now, which could cause the parliamentary majority to go down, resulting in losses for you. Today's Labour party has: an accumulated deficit and a reliance on loans from officers and affiliates to pay expenses. It is not an operating political party. The party is going to need financing to continue as a going concern. A failure to finance could cause the party to go out of business. This report shall not be construed as any kind of investment advice or solicitation. You can lose all your money by investing in this party.

Spheroids, that was self taught incompetence :-) Paul Watson Tel: +44 1414161772 Mob: +44 7818003457 GO FURTHER with DB2 GET THERE FASTER with Informix. Attend the IDUG 2006 European Conference. Vienna, Austria. 2-6 October 2006 Visit http://www.iiug.org/conf for more information. > -----Original Message----- > From: Obnoxio The Clown [mailto:obnoxio@serendipita.com] > Posted At: 16 May 2006 11:31 > Posted To: comp.databases.informix > Conversation: Dumb DBA mistakes > Subject: Re: Dumb DBA mistakes > > > > Clive Eisen said: > > Obnoxio The Clown wrote: > >> > >> Don't get trained by Paul Watson. > >> > > And don't add chunks on an HDR primary without having the > same device > > available on the secondary eh? > > Yeah, Paul taught me that. :o) > > -- > Bye now, > Obnoxio > > Information within this post contains forward looking > statements within > the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and > Section 21B > of the S E C Act of 1934. Statements that involve discussions > with respect > to projections of future events are not statements of > historical fact and > may be forward looking statements. Don't rely on them to make > a decision. > > The poster is not a reporting company registered under the > Exchange Act of > 1934. > > I have received a life peerage from Her Majesty, who is not > an officer, > minister or affiliate Labour party member. > > I intend to recover my loan now, which could cause the parliamentary > majority to go down, resulting in losses for you. Today's Labour party > has: an accumulated deficit and a reliance on loans from officers and > affiliates to pay expenses. It is not an operating political > party. The > party is going to need financing to continue as a going > concern. A failure > to finance could cause the party to go out of business. This > report shall > not be construed as any kind of investment advice or > solicitation. You can > lose all your money by investing in this party.

1. It's harder to do now, but make sure you're not in root when you install Informix. 2. Don't add a chunk to the HDR primary if the secondary isn't ready for it as well. 3. Don't run "chown informix:informix *" in any Informix subdirectory! 4. If you're running SE and copying files around, make sure you get the destination right, for example "cp /path/tabna0002*" instead of "cp /path/tabna0002* ." can have deleterious consequences. 5. Don't let a UNIX sysadmin loose on your raw chunks when people are begging for disk space. I'm sure I can think of others, but I'm already going to wake up screaming several times tonight. :o( -- Bye now, Obnoxio Information within this post contains forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21B of the S E C Act of 1934. Statements that involve discussions with respect to projections of future events are not statements of historical fact and may be forward looking statements. Don't rely on them to make a decision. The poster is not a reporting company registered under the Exchange Act of 1934. I have received a life peerage from Her Majesty, who is not an officer, minister or affiliate Labour party member. I intend to recover my loan now, which could cause the parliamentary majority to go down, resulting in losses for you. Today's Labour party has: an accumulated deficit and a reliance on loans from officers and affiliates to pay expenses. It is not an operating political party. The party is going to need financing to continue as a going concern. A failure to finance could cause the party to go out of business. This report shall not be construed as any kind of investment advice or solicitation. You can lose all your money by investing in this party.

Don't bring up IDS with the PDQPRIORITY environment variable set on an OLTP system. It was very ugly for me. 3000 users all trying to run queries at PDQPRIORITY of 1. In fact Jonathan Leffler showed a really nice way to bring up the server in his paranoid DBA class in Tampa. Prevents these kinds of mistakes. Check to make sure chunks are not being used by another instance on the box before allocating them to an instance. (I never did this one personally but I have heard about it.) Of course be very careful with oninit -iy. Make sure that your logs are backing up correctly so that the server doesn't hang when it runs out of logs.

"bozon" <curtis@crowson1. com> To Sent by: informix-list@iiug.org informix-list-bou cc nces@iiug.org Subject Re: Dumb DBA mistakes 05/16/2006 12:57 PM Don't bring up IDS with the PDQPRIORITY environment variable set on an OLTP system. It was very ugly for me. 3000 users all trying to run queries at PDQPRIORITY of 1. In fact Jonathan Leffler showed a really nice way to bring up the server in his paranoid DBA class in Tampa. Prevents these kinds of mistakes. Check to make sure chunks are not being used by another instance on the box before allocating them to an instance. (I never did this one personally but I have heard about it.) Of course be very careful with oninit -iy. Make sure that your logs are backing up correctly so that the server doesn't hang when it runs out of logs. Adding to Bozon... Use fuser -f <devicename> as well as an inode check prior to adding devices! _______________________________________________ Informix-list mailing list Informix-list@iiug.org http://www.iiug.org/mailman/listinfo/informix-list

How about - don't publish a list of ways Informix DBAs can shoot themselves in the foot on a public newslist. 10 years ago I would have been laughing all the way to the next competitive presentation.

Mark Townsend said: > > How about - don't publish a list of ways Informix DBAs can shoot > themselves in the foot on a public newslist. 10 years ago I would have > been laughing all the way to the next competitive presentation. Which just about sums up the lovely spirit of Oracle as a business, doesn't it? Hang around community sites looking for ways to twist help into competitive advantage. Help yourself to one of these: http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/Obnoxio/Smileys/wanker.gif -- Bye now, Obnoxio Information within this post contains forward looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21B of the S E C Act of 1934. Statements that involve discussions with respect to projections of future events are not statements of historical fact and may be forward looking statements. Don't rely on them to make a decision. The poster is not a reporting company registered under the Exchange Act of 1934. I have received a life peerage from Her Majesty, who is not an officer, minister or affiliate Labour party member. I intend to recover my loan now, which could cause the parliamentary majority to go down, resulting in losses for you. Today's Labour party has: an accumulated deficit and a reliance on loans from officers and affiliates to pay expenses. It is not an operating political party. The party is going to need financing to continue as a going concern. A failure to finance could cause the party to go out of business. This report shall not be construed as any kind of investment advice or solicitation. You can lose all your money by investing in this party.