Backup to NFS

[Galen Tackett]

We are running OpenVMS V7.3-1. We tried to back up about 160 GB to a saveset on a very large mount point (terabytes) on a Sun NFS server.

The initial attempt used defaults for blocksize, groupsize, CRC, etc. This try aborted with an file I/O related error. Unfortunately I didn't jot it down.

The second attempt used a smaller blocksize of about 13000 and completed without errors. But upon restore, we found that BACKUP reported an error (oops, again no notes) on the first file (a very large one), then appeared to copy the remaining files (according to the log messages). However, it turned out that only roughly 40 to 50 percent of the files were actually retrieved--there was no trace of the remaining files.

I've read a bit about problems with /CRC and also some suggestions for about using small blocksizes when the saveset is being created over NFS.

Any further information or suggestions will be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Galen

[Guy Peleg]

Galen,

You did not mention what version of TCPIP
you are using. If you are using HP's TCPIP
V5.3 you need a mandatory ECO to fix data
corruption problems related to NFS. This
may have something to do with your problem.

The name of the latest TCPIP kit is : AXPVMS-TCPIP_ECO-V0503-182-4

I hope this helps.

Guy

[Dale A. Marcy]

Not sure if this applies in your case or not, but several years ago, we had problems with a user creating save sets on a development system that would not restore on the production system. The save set contained a rather large executable and some other files. Using the system account, there was no problem creating the save set. It turned out that there was a process quota that was too low (unfortunately, it has been too long and I don't remember the quota that had to be changed), but the original backup did not complain. You might want to try the /Verify qualifier if you are not currently using it.

[Martin Johnson]

Have you verified that your NFS serve can handle large files? On 32 bit OSs, 2 GBs is the largest file size. On most 64 bit machines, the file system needs to be set to handle files larger than 2GBs.

HTH
Marty