RE: Help with ontape to disk or remote tape drive (AIX 4.2.1, IDS

Rick, In order to write your archives to disk (ahem... before anyone says, "Informix doesn't support that!", I advise them to look thru dejanews at prior CDI discussions -- Informix DOES officially support writing archives to disk!!!!) -- anyway, getting back to how to do it... Set your TAPESIZE to a maximum of 2000000 (that's 2,000,000 Kb, or 2Gb) in your ONCONFIG file. Set the TAPEDEV to an existing file, let's say, for example, "/archive/archive.data". Of course, this file must have 660 permissions, owner = informix, group = informix. Note that this TAPEDEV file can actually be a soft link to a real file, but then that real file must have the correct permissions / ownership. For TAPEBLK, we use 1024 on our HPUX 10.20 systems, but I don't know if that will be OK on you AIX boxes. You don't say which product you use for archives (onbar, ontape, or onarchive), but let's just use ontape for an example, especially since I've never actually used the other two ;). When you run the archive, ontape will stop after it has written 2Gb of data, and ask for another tape. At that point, go over to a second session, simply move /archive/archive.data (or whatever your file is) to some other file name, for example "/archive/archive_L0.<current_date>.file1". Then touch /archive/archive.data to re-create it and then set permissions and ownership appropriately. Return to the first session (the one running ontape) and hit return. It will write out another 2Gb to archive.data, and then ask for tape 3. Do the same thing as before, but this time moving archive.data to archive_L0....file2. I'm sure you get the picture now. If you prefer to have /archive/archive.data as a link, then simply change the link to point to a different file each time you have to "change tapes". If you are squeezed for disk space, you can compress each 2Gb "tape" file as you go along. Now, the big drawback to this whole thing is having to use two sessions -- one to run ontape, and the other to move / re-link to a new file. "Is there any way to automate this?" you may ask. I'm glad you asked -- the IIUG site (http://www.iiug.org) has several very good utilities for accomplishing this. At our company, we use a little shareware utility called "expect" to "spawn" the ontape command, and then it monitors ontape's output, doing the appropriate move / re-link / compress commands each time ontape asks for a new tape, and then "send"ing ontape the return keystroke so that it will continue. Works pretty slick. HTH ================================ Paul A. Mosser, Open Systems DBA Informix Certified DBSA Wells Fargo & Co. Tempe, Arizona paul.mosser@wellsfargo.com ================================ -----Original Message----- From: Bernstein, Rick [mailto:rbernste@alarismed.com] Sent: Thursday, April 01, 1999 7:06 PM To: 'informix-list@iiug.org' Subject: FW: Help with ontape to disk or remote tape drive (AIX 4.2.1, IDS 7.21.UD2) This is a plea for help from knowledgeable UNIX and Informix users: > We have a need to backup a 26Gb (IDS 7.21.UD2) database residing on a AIX > server. > However, we have no tape drives attached to this server. > > We tried to write the backup to disk. However, it died after writing to 2 > Gbytes of data. > Is there a way to circumvent this 2GB limitation with ontape? Such as > writing multiple files? > > We also have a tape drive attached to another server. > However, we do not know how to access this remote tape drive from ontape. > Therefore, we were trying to create a file system that could be NFS > mounted to > the server with the tape drive. Is there a way to directly access this > remote tape drive? > > Any assistance in solving this dilemma would be greatly appreciated. > > Thanks, > Rick > > Rick Bernstein > Principal Database Administrator > Alaris Medical Systems > rbernste@alarismed.com >

>Rick, > >In order to write your archives to disk (ahem... before anyone says, >"Informix doesn't support that!", I advise them to look thru dejanews at >prior CDI discussions -- Informix DOES officially support writing archives >to disk!!!!) -- anyway, getting back to how to do it... I'm a big fan of ontape to disk, and have used it in every site I've worked. But it's far from accepted that it's supported by Informix (yes, I've seen all the previous debates). The fact is that, in my experience, if you mention that you're backing up to disk to Tech Support in the UK, you're on your own! Neil

In article <7e4hmv$2d5$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk>, Neil Truby <ntruby@netcomuk.co.uk> writes >>Rick, >> >>In order to write your archives to disk (ahem... before anyone says, >>"Informix doesn't support that!", I advise them to look thru dejanews at >>prior CDI discussions -- Informix DOES officially support writing archives >>to disk!!!!) -- anyway, getting back to how to do it... > >I'm a big fan of ontape to disk, and have used it in every site I've worked. >But it's far from accepted that it's supported by Informix (yes, I've seen >all the previous debates). The fact is that, in my experience, if you >mention that you're backing up to disk to Tech Support in the UK, you're on >your own! > >Neil > > It is supported, Clem at Informix says it, check the FAQ at www.smooth1.demon.co.uk Section 8.33 <h2><a name="8.33">8.33 Can I run ontape to a disk file?</a></h2> "<p>On 29th Oct 1998 clem@informix.com (Clem Akins) wrote:-</p> <p>Ontape to a file *IS* supported by Informix. It has been for a while now. You can quote June Tong's internal TechInfo (not the one available to customers via the web site, but an internal one) entry #6125 to any Informix Technical Support engineer who still thinks otherwise. (Thanks, June!)</p>" Thanks to June Tong for that one! -- David Williams