onbar recovery in IDS v10

I have a client's database from a several months old backup that I am trying to restore. For some reason the onbar/ism bootstrap was not written to the backup savesets when the backup was run. The backup is always a level 0 backup and I have all the ixbar.#, oncfg.*, and onconfig files that match the backup save sets. I've tried to understand all the relevant manuals and the 29-step restore procedure and it almost works. The step that I can't quite get around is the ism_catalog -find_bootstrap step (I know this will fail). However, if I understand the manuals correctly all the information that I need to do the recovery is in the ixbar.* and oncfg.* files and all that the "ism_catalog -recover" step does is put that information into the "right" places. I would continue hurting my head by trying to solve this myself, but the recovery is time-critical and I would appreciate any help that I can get. Thanks

what happens when that command fails? what is the error? i've had a good deal of onbar experience, but not with ism. On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 5:12 PM, JOHN THOMSON <jthomson@rinax.com> wrote: > I have a client's database from a several months old backup that I am > trying > to restore. For some reason the onbar/ism bootstrap was not written to the > backup savesets when the backup was run. The backup is always a level 0 > backup > and I have all the ixbar.#, oncfg.*, and onconfig files that match the > backup > save sets. > > I've tried to understand all the relevant manuals and the 29-step restore > procedure and it almost works. The step that I can't quite get around is > the > > ism_catalog -find_bootstrap > > step (I know this will fail). However, if I understand the manuals > correctly > all the information that I need to do the recovery is in the ixbar.* and > oncfg.* files and all that the "ism_catalog -recover" step does is put that > information into the "right" places. > > I would continue hurting my head by trying to solve this myself, but the > recovery is time-critical and I would appreciate any help that I can get. > > Thanks > > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. > > --0022152d7e0b410f53049a3e0068

This is the response: ism_catalog -find_bootstrap /prx/data/SQL/rinax_data scanner: scanning file disk ISMDiskData.1 on /prx/data/SQL/rinax_data scanner: done with file disk ISMDiskData.1 scanner: No bootstrap located The directory "/prx/data/SQL/rinax_data" is the ISM Data Volume pool. If this worked, the next step would be to run ism_catalog -recover specifying the Volume Pool and bootstrap saveset ID. As best I can determine, this just recreates the backup tracking files that ISM uses.

according to : http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/idshelp/v10/topic/com.ibm.pdfs.doc/2512 2990.pdf you may need to try other volumes. page 5-4 of this PDF says if the bootstrap is not found on the volume you think it is on, you must scan each volume looking for it... are there other volumes you can try the 'find' command on? it seems the command is harmless so try all the volumes you have for the backup, perhaps it will find something. also on that same page (5-4) it talks about how that bootstrap file is created, either manually or "automatically" from the onbar script, but on page 1-11 explains that you can set the onbar script to use something other than what appears to be a default of "ISMData" , you could use, for example the "ISMDiskData" pool and then you have to manually modify the onbar script for the bootstrap backup. do you know if the bootstrap file is for certain being backed up? were these (or other) backups successfully restored ever?... is there another system currently running (i.e. the old backup you are trying restore is from a currently running system?).... perhaps if the ISM catalog had enough storage space, the bootstrap info from that old backup could still exist?... dump a new bootstrap manually from current system and try that for restore? does the customer have a current contract for IBM support/maint?... maybe a PMR is in order? sorry, i am probably not much help. On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:11 AM, JOHN THOMSON <jthomson@rinax.com> wrote: > This is the response: > > ism_catalog -find_bootstrap /prx/data/SQL/rinax_data > scanner: scanning file disk ISMDiskData.1 on /prx/data/SQL/rinax_data > scanner: done with file disk ISMDiskData.1 > > scanner: No bootstrap located > > The directory "/prx/data/SQL/rinax_data" is the ISM Data Volume pool. > > If this worked, the next step would be to run ism_catalog -recover > specifying > the Volume Pool and bootstrap saveset ID. As best I can determine, this > just > recreates the backup tracking files that ISM uses. > > > > ******************************************************************************* > Forum Note: Use "Reply" to post a response in the discussion forum. > > --00032557a34e4c0cec049a51ee06

I've managed to determine a couple of reasons/answers: 1) if you have LTAPEDEV set to /dev/null then the ims bootstrap saveset does not get written. It seems like it writes the bootstrap to the logical logs and then never sends it to the backup volume. Changing LTAPEDEV will result in the creation of a bootstrap. 2) the bootstrap only seems to be necessary when one is recovering an image of one server onto either a blank server or importing it into another instance. Simply tarring up the /usr/informix/ism directory and restoring it onto the target (blank) server seems to be a work-around.