Re: ontape -a beginners question

Daniel Leonard wrote: > > Hi, > > I am relatively new to Informix and have a question regarding archiving of > logical logs to tape: > > I have a database in which a lot of processing is done over the weekend - > is it possible to somehow do two logical log archives on one tape (i.e. one You can use the no-rewind tape device to do this, however, you will have to copy the second set of logs from the second tape file to another tape as Informix restores can ONLY restore from the first tape file. You cannot just reposition the tape to the second file and restore as ontape will close and reopen the tape file several times at the beginning of the restore to verify the correct tape is loaded, etc., before beginning the actual restore. > on Fri and Sat night). I assume that if you do two seperate runs this > overwrites the previous one?? This would prevent the need for someone to > go onsite and change tapes. I have looked at ontape -c (continuous) but I > would really like the backups to run with no user interaction necessary. > Version is 7.30C1 Ontape -c ONLY requires user intervention, once started, if the tape fills and needs to be changed. If the tape is large enough to hold the weekend's activities you should have no problems. Another option is to write the logs to a mirrored disk using the ALARMPROGRAM to start ontape -a everytime a logfile fills. Then a cron job can sweep the files to tape periodically. Look at my submission to the IIUG Software Repository, utils3_ak, which contains a shell script to do this (a version of the Informix logs_full.sh which uses ontape instead of onbar) and my own executable ALARMPROGRAM among other things does the log backups. Art S. Kagel