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onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

  • 1.  onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 13 days ago

    Hi Family.

    I'm having enough frustration getting cross-system restore to work. But this is SO frustrating:

    With my entire environment set up by a script that has been working for years, I made the modification:

    /usr/informix/bin/onbar_d -r -p -w -t "2023-11-30 05:00:00"

    And it's immediate response is:

    4024  4022 Invalid Point In Time value specified: .

    ...

    4024  4022 /usr/informix/bin/onbar_d complete, returning 149 (0x95)

    This is INSANE! (Anyone remember the Crazy Eddie ads? :-)  I am being stopped by an unreasonable bouncer right at the door!  And, BTW, the same response if I use single quotes.  Our time zone is US so there is no issue with the date format and I have manually used that date in the recent past.  Our NetBackup guy assures me the tapes for that time slot are still on line.  (Or is he wrong?)

    Anyone seen this little horror before?  And what did you do about it?

    Thanks much!

    -- Jacob S



    ------------------------------
    Jacob Salomon
    ---
    Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.  --Attr: Yogi Berra
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 13 days ago
    Which version are we talking about ?  Messed up GL_DATETIME ?

    As you know I am a big fan of strace -f -o <file> on things like this :)

    Cheers
    Paul

    On 4/10/2025 11:13 AM, Jacob Salomon via IBM TechXchange Community wrote:
    01000196207a47a9-c144829d-6606-4e8a-aade-c2d9ae6ff357-000000@email.amazonses.com">
    Hi Family. I'm having enough frustration getting cross-system restore to work. But this is SO frustrating: With my entire environment set up...





  • 3.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 13 days ago

    Thanks, Paul.

    No issue with GL-DATETIME.  I had run a similar PIT restore a few weeks ago and used the identical parameters and date/time format. Just to check I just manually did an onbar run with a deliberately bad date format.  It gave me the identical "invalid point in time value" error.  So the bouncer is just being too eager.

    Ya just gotta love these clear error messages!



    ------------------------------
    Jacob Salomon
    ---
    Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.  --Attr: Yogi Berra
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 13 days ago
    Hello Jacob,
    I was using for PIT restore
    unset DBTIME
    export GL_DATETIME="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
    after restore
    unset GL_DATETIME
    set DBTIME="%H:%M:%S"
     
    Milan Rafaj
     
     
     
    Unless stated otherwise above:
    Kyndryl Česká republika, spol. s r. o.
    Sídlo: V Parku 2308/8, Chodov, 148 00 Praha 4,
    IČ: 096 28 886
    Zapsaná v obchodním rejstříku, vedeném Městským soudem v Praze (oddíl C, vložka 339277)
    Registered address: V Parku 2308/8, Chodov, 148 00 Prague 4
    Company ID: 096 28 886
    Registered in the Commercial Register maintained by the Municipal Court in Prague (Part C, Entry 339277)





  • 5.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 13 days ago

    Thank you, Milan.

    But as I replied to Paul, that was not an issue a few weeks ago when I did the PIT to Jan1 of this year.  However, recalling that, I did try a manual onbar with date 2025-01-01 <time> and it made no complaint about an "invalid date".  It went straight to the "Successfully connect to storage manager".  (Of course it barfed right afterward because I had not set up my environment.  In my current case it's a monstrous script setting up the environment before running onbar.)

    This kinda tells me the date is invalid because NetBackup doesn't like that 2023 date.  Although, as I also mentioned, our NetBackup guy claims our oldest existing backup dates from November 2023.

    I may have to do a binary search through 2024 to see what restore date is acceptable.  But that's up my users.

    Thanks guys, for helping me devise the experiment.  I'll post if there's something more useful to report.



    ------------------------------
    Jacob Salomon
    ---
    Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.  --Attr: Yogi Berra
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 13 days ago

    Have you tried it without the "-w"?



    ------------------------------
    Mike Walker
    xDB Systems, Inc
    www.xdbsystems.com
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 13 days ago
    Thanks Mike.

    Yes we tried with and without the -w.  It turns out that the specified date is long expired but the company policy has been that certain backups are kept for much longer.  When we specified one of those dates (and restored the ixbar for that date) the backup did start up.  It barfed because the environment was not set up but we can fix that.  But now we can get past that infernal bouncer!  And I think we can get away w/o the -t parameter.

    +----- Jacob Salomon --------------------------------------------------+
    | Praise without end for the go-ahead zeal of whoever it was that      |
    |  invented the wheel;                                                 |
    | But never a word for the poor soul's sake that thought ahead,        |
    |  and invented the brake.                                             |
    +-------------- Howard Nemerov, on the US Bicentennial ----------------+






  • 8.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 13 days ago

    This error, in my view clearly, refers only to the PIT datetime string provided and to onbar's inability to properly parse it - given potential external factors like CLIENT_LOCALE, GL_DATETIME, DBTIME env vars.



    ------------------------------
    Andreas Legner
    Informix Dev
    HCL Software
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 10 days ago

    What is the contacts of the ixbar file?



    ------------------------------
    wayne martin
    ------------------------------



  • 10.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 9 days ago

    Two things:

    Why are you doing the onbar deamon?

    What is the od dump of you date string?



    ------------------------------
    wayne martin
    ------------------------------



  • 11.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 8 days ago

    Good point there, Wayne.

    I copy/pasted the command-line in the bar_act.log into my post; Of course I did not run onbar_d directly.  Let that "_d" be stricken from the record. :-)

    In any case, I have already posted that it turns out that date was rejected because the backup set for that date had expired and is no longer on the storage manager.  On the other hand, Nov 4 of that year is still on line (different expiration schedule) so I am working on that angle.  Other errors but the date passed muster.

    BTW, when I deliberately used a syntactically incorrect date like '1234345 89765" it gave the identical error message. Hence the confusion.  It might be nice if it would tell me "That date was expired" or "Data for that date not on storage manager."  Y'know, something that would actually tell me what's wrong.  This is something I always complained about while at Informix and IBM has always been notorious for unhelpful diagnostics.



    ------------------------------
    Jacob Salomon
    ---
    Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded.  --Attr: Yogi Berra
    ------------------------------



  • 12.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 8 days ago
    Ok 





  • 13.  RE: onbar is rejecting my date for point-in-time restore

    Posted 8 days ago

    Hello Jakob,

    I know that before restoring with archecker (Tabel Level Restore), if you use a restore to '<Date>' statement, it is better to set DBTIME to the correct format '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'. I think this should also work for onbar.  At least, if I set DBTIME to a wrong value for the given date, I get exactly this error message.



    ------------------------------
    Andreas Seifert
    CURSOR Software AG
    http://www.admin-scout.com
    ------------------------------