tar vs fbackup

[BAUKnight]

dears,
i've customer that runs ORACLE 9i with AS10g.
he used to do his database files backup using the tar command, we checked a tape once and found that the backup script used does not take afile because its size is more than 2GB, i read the man page for tar command and found one of its limitation is the 2GB file size, i adviced my customer to used fbackup instead of tar, but i am not sure if fbackup can backup files with size more than 2GB. attached a comparison file but nothing related to size said.

[Sivakumar TS]

Hi Ahmed,

You can use fbackup. This supports files greater than 2GB.

Alternatively, if you still want to use tar, you can download the GNU tar, this also supports files of more than 2GB in size.

Regards,

Siva.

[Sivakumar TS]

Hi,

You can download the GNU version of tar,(tar-1.15.1)

at

http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Gnu/tar-1.15.1/

Regards,

Siva.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi :

'fbackup' *does* handle files larger than 2GB. That's but one advantage it has.

You can obtain a patch for 11.11 'tar' that enables handling of files up to 8GB: PHCO_28992.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Sยภเl Kย๓คг]

Hi,
Install the tar patch mentioned by James, this will enable tar to handle files upto 8GB size. We use the same in our setup.
Regards,
Sunil

[Bill Hassell]

And I will vote against tar for a number of reasons:

- tar is an industry standard that cannot be changed. A tar program that stores files larger than 2Gb is no longer interchangeable. The HP patch only allows 8Gb so a 10Gb cannot be stored (nor can a 900Gb file). The GNU tar stores large files but normal tar programs can't read this format.

- tar cannot handle a parity error on tape.

- tar can't handle a tape changer

- tar cannot create a table of contents without reading the entire tape (and additional tapes if ther data does not fit on one tape)

- tar will write over the first tape without comment if you accidently forget to put in the second tape, thus destroying all the previous data.

So if you are using Oracle, you probably spent an enormous amount of money for licensing and the data that it manages is extremely valuable. Do not entrust the backup to a tool that was designed when the largest disks and taoes were just a few megabytes in size.

- fbackup will backup any filesize on HP-UX, 5 Gb, 500 Gb, even 1000 Gb files.

- fbackup can handle tape libraries and change tapes during backup.

- fbackup creates a tape-by-tape cumulative index before writing any data on a tape. This means the entire backup table of contents can be read in a few seconds.

- fbackup's index is tape volume aware. So if you need a file from a 3 tape backup, simply put the last tape (#3) into the drive and run frecover to restore the file. frecover will tell you which tape is the one with the file.

- fbackup creates high speed search marks that allow a single file to be restored in just a few minutes no matter how big the tape may be (local tape drives).

- frecover can resync on a tape that has a bad spot.

- fbackup will not allow a previous tape in a multi-tape backup to be accidently overwritten.

In summary, fbackup is the closest you can get to a commercial quality backup program such as Data Protector. The backup program is the only link you have to recovring lost data -- you don't want a program that doesn't work when you need it.

[BAUKnight]

Dears,
thx for ur replies, i think i am going to use fbacup, attached is the current backup script we use with tar,
please advice how to change the tar command to fbackup with the same functionality.
thx

[Peter Godron · Accepted solution]

Ahmed,
create a file (backup.graph)with all the directories to be backed up:
i /u1/app/oracle/oradata/PTRCDB
i /arc/oradata
.
.
The i in the first column indicates to include this directory.

Replace you tar line with:
/usr/sbin/fbackup -nAvf /dev/rmt/0mb -s -g back.graph

See man fbackup for more info

[Bill Hassell]

One additional option for fbackup is to always use -c to override the very old tape drive specs. Create a file called /etc/fbackup.config with the following text:

blocksperrecord 4096
records 64
checkpointfreq 4096
readerprocesses 6
maxretries 5
retrylimit 5000000
maxvoluses 200
filesperfsm 2000

Then use it in fbackup as in:

fbackup ...other_options... -c /etc/fbackup.config

[BAUKnight]

we get the needed info to persuade the customer with fbackup