Hello everyone

Am I right if I am saying that we CANNOT do backup on disk, using ONTAPE, with a file greater than 2gig?
Onconfig:
TAPEDEV /backup/db
TAPEBLK 512
TAPESIZE 80000000

After backuping 2147483647 bytes, ontape give the following error:
File size limit exceeded

If so, how can we do backup of informix database on disk?

I am using Informix 7.31 on SuSE Enterprise 8.

I can create files larger than 2 gig on Linux. I did test it with tar.

Is there any parameter or tools available to create backup on disk, that will generate files greater than 2 gig?

1. I need to backup Informix on disk (local disk).
2. Our backup server will backup the file on tape.

I cannot backup directly on tape because there is no tape drive on the Database server.

We looked to use on-bar and Netbackup of Veritas, but the cost to backup our database was arround 50k$. It is to much for backuping only 1 database.

All suggestion will be highly appreciated

Hi,
I dont know whether the ontape allows more than 2GB files in 7.3. I used the following process for backing up the DB to Disk by breaking them into smaller sizes.

You can break up the backup by specifying the TAPESIZE to 2GB and then make the bakup. Once the filesize limit is reached the engine asks for another tape to mount on. You can move the old file to some other name and create the same file with touch command and continue the backup. This process is to be followed until u backp the whole data.



Bye.

Hi,

Create one file-system via LVM, next set this to large files.

Gustavo.

Hello Pathri

You can understand that I do not stay each days for backups.

I am looking for an overnight backup.

-----------------

Hi Guery

Our file system can handle more than 2gig file size. It is not a problem. I did test it using tar and I stopped tar after 5gig.

-----

Is anyone has a solution to backup Informix on disk without human intervention?

Since nobody add solution on this problem,

Am I the only one that need to do AUTOMATIC backup on disk?

I understand that I can do backup online to disk with 2 gig file size, but I do not want to spend my day infrom of the screen waiting to change the name of the file and than press enter to allow ontape to continue the backup.

It is not a problem when you have fiew gigs to backup but when you have several gigs (Over 200) it is annoying

Hi,

Maybe there is a file size limit, but I can't exactly remember on IDS 7.31. Anyway it doesn't exists in IDS 9.40.

If you can't migrate right now, you can have a look at www.iiug.org. There are several utilities (auto_ontape, db_ontape, mbp_ontape) that could help you.

Hope it helps.

I use onbar and the ISM that comes with Informix to backup my database to disk, and I run it all via cron jobs. There are several steps you need to do to set it up, but the Backup/Restore guide have decent instructions on how to do it.