Re: archive to disk w/ ontape?

wjjordan@nortel.ca (Jim Jordan) offerred: +(Aside: You've also probably discovered that ontape is very trusting. +That is, if you tell it that you've changed "tapes" by pressing a key, +it believes you and will happily overwrite the file it just wrote as the +first mock tape without checking what's there first. You have to copy +the file it just wrote elsewhere before you reply to the prompt if you +want to preserve that part of the archive. You can't change TAPEDEV to +point to another file in mid-archive.) Not true. Ontape will do a check of the volume header before writing to it; it won't let you write volume 2 of the archive over volume 1 (in a multi-tape archive). You will get a message "warning: previous tape is still mounted!" It *will* let you overwrite an earlier archive. This is the main reason no-rewind tape devices can't be used with ontape: it does the read of the header, then "rewinds" the tape by closing the device, followed by a reopen and write. In the scenario you describe, if you don't change the file, you will be stuck in a loop of being requested to mount a new tape and press return to continue... You *can* overwrite an earlier log backup tape, as long as it is not part of a multivolume backup. Dave ** Dave Kosenko <davek@summitdata.com> ** Director of Training Services (732) 469-4070 ** Summit Data Group (an Informix Authorized Education Center) ** Find my advice useful? Let me teach you everything I know about ** Informix. Sign up for OFFICIAL Informix training at SDG. ** For details, see http://www.summitdata.com/training