Hi,

I've only one tape driver on my Informix server.
I need to backup Informix and applications on one tape via cron job.
What shall I do? How can I "ontape" databases and "tar" applications to one
tape? And, How to restore them?
Thank.

I don't think it's possible since ontape and tar are different formats - each will be unaware of the other's presence on the tape. If you really have to backup both the server and filesystem together you may need to move to the dbspace file format as opposed to raw devices. That way the dbspace files will be visible to tar and can be backed up as part of the filesystem. The only drawback would be referential-integrity issues - don't have transaction-processing occuring when you are backing up the dbspace files!

Hi,
Do a Ontape on to the disk itself and backup all the filesystems with tar.
If u want to resore the same, extract the ontape backup from tape to disk and perform a restore.

Bye.

What command or syntax can let "ontape" to save the DB to disk instead of backuping to tape?
Thank you.

Hi,
Change the TAPEDEV parameter to the file you want to backup the DB. eg
TAPEDEV /software/newdbtar/backup2007. Also change the TAPEBLK size accordingly and do a ontape -s -L 0 at command prompt. This will backup your DB to the file you specified. Then you can take a tar of the filesystem.

bye.

There is a way to do this without overwriting, check with your sysadmin.
When you run ontape, the backup completes and then rewinds the tape which makes the tape viable for destruction if another backup( in your case the file system backup) is run. There is a way to instruct ontape not to rewind the tape after the backup is completed.

Hope you find that option.

-Abraham