Re: The old raw devices chestnut.

rkusenet wrote:
> "Data Goob" <datagoob_at_hotmail.com> wrote
>
>> One other thing you might find attractive to plain ole files
>> instead of raw devices is the ability to clone databases. You
>> can get quite creative with plain files in ways that you cannot
>> with raw devices because of the lock-in of raw-devices.
>
>
> Please elaborate.
>
> If you use symbolic links for raw devices, then there is no lock-in
> of raw devices, or am I missing something.

I don't think so. Even with cooked files I'd be using symlinks; you never know when you need to put a lump onto another file system. Speaking only Informixly here, I can clone a live engine with symlinks and a simple procedure, and only a temporary outage to bounce the parent engine, so once again I don't see any administrative dramas with raw spaces. I think I just need to shrug and move on; nobody seems to have concrete facts to backup the claim. [about to reply to Data Goobs original message on that one - there's something in there that hints at something.]

Also different engines will have different issues, so we've got to keep a careful distance from any specific engine on this cross-posted thread. Further, talking about restores rather than raw devices is straying a bit too far from the thread. Received on Tue Apr 13 2004 - 21:12:23 CDT