Re: archive to disk w/ ontape?

In article <6mop7i$6qe$1@supernews.com>, Christopher J. Wargaski <cjw@interaccess.com> wrote: >I am running Informix 7.2.4 and want to do a 0 level archive to disk >instead of tape. I changed the onconfig backup device parameter to >that of the file "/backup/informix.archive" and set the size parameter >too. . . . >When I try the "ontape -s -L 0" command, I am asked to mount tape 1. I >press return, then I am asked to mount tape 2--for somereason, only >about 32K of data are written to the file, then it asks for another >tape to be mounted. TAPESIZE is the amount of data ontape will write before prompting for a new tape. If it's small, it'll only write a small amount of data. If it's zero, you'll probably get about 32K before ontape checks how much it wrote. (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.) We just leave TAPESIZE at 1024000 when we do an archive to disk. If we run out of disk space, then we abandon the attempt, delete the file, reset TAPEDEV to the tape drive, and archive to tape. (We have a lot of onconfig-mangling shell scripts; awk and sed have become good friends.) Set TAPESIZE to the typical amount of free space on that particular disk (or more), or better still, to the typical capacity of the tapes you use, and you should be OK. Regards, Jim Jordan -- W. Jim Jordan, Nortel, Stop 314 Qualicum, PO Box 3511 Stn C, Ottawa, ON K1Y 4H7 Canada I do not speak for Nortel. Unsolicited commercial or bulk e-mail may attract an invoice.