Oracle backup; tar max. filesize limitation

[Alexander Yereshenko]

Hello, dear colleagues!
I faced a problem in backup Oracle dbf-files to Ultrium 230. I tried to tar file, which has size about 17 Gb and got a fail.
Those files I’m trying to backup are "read-only" in Enterprise Console and can be made "offline", also.
Could anybody tell me the way to backup big files to tape?
I used
'tar cvf /dev/rmt/0m `cat dbffiles`' to proceed the operation.

[Thomas J. Harrold]

Does your tar operation fail immediately, or after a delay? Is data spinning to tape before the failure?

-tjh

[Alan_152]

Basic tar has between a 2 and 4 Gb limit, though newer versions can bypass that.

For your purposes, I'd use "dd" or "amanda" instead.

[Ivan Ferreira]

I would suggest the use of star, see also this thread:

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1045972

You can also use cpio to avoid the sile limit problem.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

17 GB is not a filesize limit that I know about on the OS. 8 GB may be, but not 17.

I do not believe this backup method should be used.

A professional product like Veritas Netback or Legato should be licensed to back up files of this size.

If you must use tar, don't make a gigantic tar file that includes all your files, do it like this.

cd /databasedir
tar cvf /dev/rmt/0m *

issue tar rvf commands to ammend the archive.


SEP

[Alexander Yereshenko]

First of all Iâ d like to thank you all who tried to help me with my question. Honestly, I realized that I had created threat in "Linux" section only after I had submitted the form. My fault.
We use HP-UX 11.11 on our rp7420 server.

Thomas J. Harrold: I think, I should say that tar failed after some period of time. Iâ ve got this message from it: "tar: Size of /path_to_my_file/file_name.dbf > 8GB. Not dumped."

Alan: we have installed the new version of tar to our system and as you could read in my answer to Thomas above, tar couldnâ t dump the file that exceeded 8 Gb.

Ivan Ferreira: Thank you for the URL. But I donâ t need to make backup to the network device. But donâ t you think that in comparison with cpio fbackup suggests more efficient disk tape usage, more easy listing the files on tape and so on?

Steven E. Protter: How do you do. I meant that filesize exceeds the number that tar was allowed to dump. Itâ s not filesystem limitation, Iâ m agreeing with you.
I think, youâ re right, that itâ s better for us to use some professional backup program, but now Iâ ve got a task to make backup of our system as soon as possible.
What do you think about fbackup utility? Does it allow creating something like "multivolume archive" on several tapes? I didnâ t find anything about this way of fbackup work in manuals and here on the forum.

[Thomas J. Harrold]

From what I recall, fbackup does allow multi-volume backups. I believe that gnu tar will also allow multi-volume backups.

I use gnu tar, but I'm not sure I've ever tried it with files > 8GB.

Can you talk to your DBA's about breaking up the 17GB .dbf file into smaller files? It would be safer, in case you ever suffer corruption, and need to reload.

-tjh

[Thomas J. Harrold]

Here is where you can download gnu tar for HP-UX:

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

-tjh

[Alexander Yereshenko]

Thomas J. Harrold: We have downloaded new version of tar already, but it had worked so:
'$ ./tar
/usr/lib/dld.sl: Can't open shared library: /usr/local/lib/libintl.sl
/usr/lib/dld.sl: No such file or directory
Abort'
I'll try to create multi-volume backup with fbackup and write you about results.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Fbackup/frecover are HP-UX only commands; there are no Linux versions.

[Alexander Yereshenko]

A. Clay Stephenson: You're right. As I wrote before, it was my fault, sorry.
Could you help me to move this thread to HP-UX section, please?

[Thomas J. Harrold]

Alexander,

There are 3 runtime dependency packages for gnu tar.

They are:
http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Gnu/libgcc-4.1.1/

http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Gnu/gettext-0.14.6/

http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Development/Libraries/libiconv-1.10/

There are links to these on the gnu tar download page.

Hope this helps,

-tjh

[Alexander Yereshenko]

Hello, Thomas!
I have downloaded all packages you have advised to. I'll install its on today, hopefully, and will check that tar will say about.
I've tried to make multi-volume backup with fbackup on yesterday but didn't realize the result yet. I have made backup 244 Gb of data onto 200 Gb tape (Ultrium 230 tape drive), and it haven't caused any error about overflowing the space. Is it normal situation, don't you know?
By the way, could you help move this thread to HP-UX section? I really in trouble with it.

[Thomas J. Harrold · Accepted solution]

Alexander,

You are probably getting hardware compression when you write to your ultrium tape. It's possible, depending on the data you are backing up (oracle especially), to get 3:1 or even 4:1 compression.

Let me know how your testing with gnu tar works out.

I think we'll need a forum administrator to move this thread to it's proper location (HPUX administration).

I'll see if I can get someone to help out.

-tjh