I'm running Informix IDS 7.3 on RH 7.2. The logical logs have filled up and I can't connect. A message says backup is needed. The system was originally set up to dump the logs so they never fill up. Since that time, a new chunk was added to the root dbspace. Also, a new dbspace was created in another new chunk.

Is there any way to recover from this situation?

You need to perform a level-0 archive using ontape -s or ontape -s -L 0.

What do you mean by:

dump the logs so they never fill up.
LTAPEDEV=/dev/null ?

If you don't have a production system it's ok to do the backup to /dev/null.

So far I haven't been able to do the archive. The server only comes up in quiescent mode. No connections are possible in quiescent mode, and I don't know wheter archives can be run from quiescent mode. When I try to archive (ontape -s -L 0), the message returned is "server is in incompatible state or user authentication failure". The user has successfully archived in the past, so I don't think that's the problem.
The server entered this state when a large transaction was run and filled the logical log files.

Thanks to everyone for your help.
Gary Marshall

What does the message log say when you do an onmode -m?

In quiescent mode you can add new logs... The server is probably doing a rollback and doesn't have enough logs to do this rollback.

Thanks for you help.

onmode -m

After about 2 min, there is a repeating message "Logical Log Files are Full, Backup is Needed"

After starting with oninit -sy, Physical recovery is completed, Logical recovery starts but does not complete.

onstat -l shows 5 of 6 logical logs 100% used, log 6 is 13% used.

BTW,

RE adding new log files. I read that new log files wouldn't be available to use until an archive is performed. Do you know if that is correct? So far I haven't been able to do an archive (ontape -s -L 0).

Thanks very much.
Gary Marshall

This feature is available in 9.30.
In 9.21 (and earlier) you need a level 0 archive.

You can always call technical support. They can do stuff we can't!
ask for a tb-zero or a tb-one.
If you have a maintenance contract, it's free!

What is your LTAPEDEV set to in your onconfig file ?

If you have support, I would persue that option. You might be able to fix this by setting your LTAPEDEV=/dev/null and bounce you instance. If not, then you will have to contact support.

Thanks to everyone for your help.

LTAPEDEV is set to /dev/null

I'm in the process of trying emergency logical log file backup, using ondatartr as described in ch. 6 and ch. 9 of IDS 7.3 Archive and Backup Guide. If anyone has any experience with using ondatartr to do emergency logical log backups, I'd be happy to hear about it. In the meantime, I'll be reading the documentation and giving it a try.

I found that suggestion on a post from jsalomon(guest) on 4-5-2001.

Thanks again to everyone.
Gary Marshall

Good luck.