Re: Need help for backuping Oracle on a RAID5 tower (AIX)

From: Geoffrey C Marshall <count_at_ozemail.com.au>
Date: 1997/09/14
Message-ID: <341B24B3.D762B704@ozemail.com.au>#1/1

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Sylvain Falardeau wrote:

> Problem:
> --------
>
> When backuping a Oracle database (6 files of 1Gig with the AIX
> Filesystem)
> with SYSBACK (AIX backup utilities), we can't restore it without
> "inconsistencies" of filesystem:
>
> ls -l indicate 6 files of 1G in the 8G filesystem.
> df -k indicate 40% of filesystem space used!!!
>
> When calling Oracle support, he says that some backup utilities trunc
> nulls in files (like tar). But the guy don't say anything about
> SYSBACK.
>
> If anyone exprienced some problems with this type of hardware and
> Oracle
> database, please e-mail me your solution for safe backup. :) :)

I don't have the specific experience of Oracle and AIX, but I know the problem. Unix allows a user to create 'large' files that only have a few bytes of data (You can do this by creating a file then using fseek b4 writing). This give you files with 'holes' in them. Most software (including 'cp') will destroy these files, in that the copy does not have the 'holes' and therefore the data is at the wrong place in the file.

You can test this by using 'cp'. If the resultant file is not the same size then you have that problem.

I know of no way around this, except to use utilities for your backup that can manage the 'holes'.

Geoff...

---

Geoffrey C. Marshall
(a.k.a) count_at_ozemail.com.au

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--------------F7DAC505F21DC00889261C00-- Received on Sun Sep 14 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT