fbackup WARNING question

[Patti Johnson]

I run a nightly backup - and sometimes a file will be open and can not be backed up. That is OK. The problem is that the WARNING messages display almost 2000 times for the same file.
fbackup(2002): WARNING: reader 0: unable to open file ....
fbackup(2002): WARNING: reader 1: unable to open file ....

I'm running HP-UX 11.0.

Any idea how I can limit the number of WARNING messges for the same file?

Thanks,
Patti

[Peter Godron]

Patti,
please see:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=840739
Can be configured via -c config option on fbackup command.
See man fbackup

[Patti Johnson]

thanks,
I understand that the file was in use and that the message is just a warning.

But my question is why does it print the exact same warning 2000+ times?

I did not see anything in the man page that addressed the number of tries to read an open file, or how to limit the number of warinings on the same file - that is why I posted the questions.

Patti

[Steve Steel]

Hi


This looks like a possible bad disk

Use dd if=disk of=/dev/null

to check


Steve Steel

[Patti Johnson]

It's not a bad disk.

This is the backup of an Oracle archive log file. Occassionaly when the backup is running one of the files will be in use - this is normal and not a problem as the file is kept on disk and backed up during the next backup cycle.

I only want to know if it is possible to control the 2000+ messages in the log file.

Patti

[Steve Steel]

Hi


If the file was open you would see another message that it could not be backed up

see

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1012153


Steve Steel

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Pati,

fbackup creates a filelist prior to backing anything up.

If the file was moved or disappeared due to a user delete, cron script, or bad disk, this message would come up.

How to interpret the severity of the situation depends on the value of the file. If it is a critical oracle backup missing, then game over, its a bad backup. If its a temporary file on /var, big fat hairy deal, as Garfield says. The backup is good.

To your original question, I don't think you can limit the number of warning messages, but you can with scripting possibly redirect the output to /dev/null

SEP

[Peter Godron · Accepted solution]

Patti,
can you please re-read my reply.

You limit the amount of retries, hence reduce the number of warning messages.

You can also reduce the number of read-processes,as it seems both multiple readers are logging the same file problem.

[Patti Johnson]

Re-read the man page (sometimes you just don't see it at first)

Found the maxretries parameter for the config file and set to 50. Didn't see what the default value was, but it must be somewhere in the 2000 range. Hopefully this will reduce the number of warning messages in the file.

I did get a message that the file was not backed up - but since I don't delete the archive files until they have been backed up 2 days in a row, this is not a problem.

Thanks for the replies.
Patti