I am currently using informix that runs on a solaris machine ... but my company is going to switch to linux rh9 soon .. i am tried to backup my database in solaris and restore it on linux machines but it gives me this error physical restore failed - function read archive backup failed code -1 errno 0 ...
i couldnt restore the .dbf file from solaris in linux ... is it because linux does not support the solaris informix database or could it be other errors ?? please help .... thankssssss

Hi!

You should be able to make this transition without too much headache, but the error -1 means "not the owner", and Informix is pretty adamant about having the proper ownership ("informix:informix") and permissions (rwx on dirs, rw- on files) over the file structures it deals with, because it relies on that layer instead of having its own parallael universe of security (actually a good decision, IMHO, because it foregoes an extra layer of management/complexity on your behalf).

Other questions that might help others assist you as you try to get through this:

Which versions of the OS are you using (including kernel and gcc on RedHat)?

Which version(s) of Informix are you using?

Providing that info up front often helps get faster responses, because it helps your readers filter themselves out (or in) in terms of whether they might know something helpful to you.

Good luck!

Backups are platform and version dependent. Maybe if you're lucky it works, but I wouldn't count on it. Especially things like the float datatype is somewhat different stored on some platforms.

Backup/restore isn't a migration tool. I think you should look for things like dbexport/dbimport (very slow for big databases!!!!) or copying the database structure with dbschema and move the data whit remore select/insert statements.

Hope this helps,

Rob Prop

thanks guys .. i got it working by using DBEXPORT and DBIMPORT .. not me actually, but my senior got it working .. anyway, thanks for all ya help ..