Unattended backup of DB

I'm only a little familiar with Informix, so forgive what may be a naive question. I have an RS/6000 with AIX 4.3.1 and Informix 7.22. We need to do weekly unattended backups, but it would be difficult at best to take down the database. Our DBA suggests using the ONTAPE utility. I've read through the manual, and it seems like doing a weekly level 0 ontape backup might work. However, this utility appears to insist on having someone physically present to press "enter" when the tape is inserted. Is there a switch to tell it to not ask (the tape will already be in the drive)? Is there a better backup given that we can't take down the system to backup? Thanks for your help.

Tom Krotchko wrote: > > I'm only a little familiar with Informix, so forgive what may be a > naive question. > > I have an RS/6000 with AIX 4.3.1 and Informix 7.22. > > We need to do weekly unattended backups, but it would be > difficult at best to take down the database. > > Our DBA suggests using the ONTAPE utility. I've read through > the manual, and it seems like doing a weekly level 0 ontape backup > might work. > > However, this utility appears to insist on having someone physically > present to press "enter" when the tape is inserted. > > Is there a switch to tell it to not ask (the tape will already be in > the drive)? No but you can redirect responses from a file, here script, or another program. If your backups will fit on one tape the file or here script will do the trick. Otherwise you will have to setup a dialogue with ontape as a child process on a two-way pipe with the parent using something like expect to parse what ontape is looking for. See my alarmprogram in utils3_ak and the expect-like module it comes with as an example. Of course that does not get the physical tape changed but maybe the parent can ring a bell somewhere. Art S. Kagel > Is there a better backup given that we can't take down the system to > backup? > > Thanks for your help.