Informix

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  • 1.  after OS/Informix upgrade alarmprogram not backing up logical logs automagically

    Posted Mon April 11, 2022 02:52 PM
    I'm testing the upgrade of our ERP server (OS & Informix) on our test/dev server and everything went well except the alarmprogram not doing logical log backups. And, I am puzzled by why is not working.

    prior to upgrade was SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP4 with Informix 12.10.fc7. After the upgrade is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 and Informix 12.10.FC13. Is a VM on VMware vSphere, but don't think that has anything to the cause of logical logs not backing up.

    I didn't see any errors or other indications of a Informix problem and on OS side I test cron and at jobs which seem to work. Also reviewed permissions/ownership and config files. But maybe reading what I want not what printed.

    if have any suggestions on what to do next would be grateful.



    ll ../bin/oninit
    -rwsr-sr-- 1 root informix 27392099 Sep 20 2021 ../bin/oninit


    ll onconf.cars
    -rw-r--r-- 1 informix informix 84831 Jan 4 09:02 onconf.cars


    ll alarmprogram.sh
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 root informix 19716 Sep 20 2021 alarmprogram.sh

    On production system that is working still on old OS/Informix as the dba user as owner and not root, and group I think also the primary for the dba user not Informix. I've tried with root:Informix and dba:common and neither seem to make a difference.

    grep ALARMPROG onconf.cars
    # ALARMPROGRAM - Specifies the alarm program to display event
    # SYSALARMPROGRAM - Specifies the system alarm program triggered
    ALARMPROGRAM /opt/informix/etc/alarmprogram.sh
    SYSALARMPROGRAM /opt/informix/etc/evidence.sh

    grep LTAPEDEV onconf.cars
    # LTAPEDEV - The tape device path for logical logs
    #LTAPEDEV /dev/null
    LTAPEDEV /backups

    ll / | grep backups

    drwxrwx--- 3 informix informix 28672 Apr 8 08:59 backups

    ll /opt | grep informix

    drwxr-xr-x 35 informix informix 4096 Sep 20 2021 informix




    John David Adamski
    Sr. Sysadmin/DBA
    Graceland University
    1 University Place, Lamoni, IA 50140
    adamski@graceland.edu
    641-784-5267
    #Informix


  • 2.  RE: after OS/Informix upgrade alarmprogram not backing up logical logs automagically

    IBM Champion
    Posted Mon April 11, 2022 03:06 PM
    There are a number of reasons for this, including the environment setup when informix is started.

    However, starting with the basics, did you modify alarmprogram.sh after the Informix upgrade to set BACKUPLOGS=Y ?  The default is "N".

    Also make sure that the BACKUP_CMD is set to ontape or onbar as you want - I'm guessing ontape because you mention that you set LTAPEDEV.  There may be other customizations in alarmprogram.sh that you may want to copy over also.

    If you have already done this, then I normally place debugging messages in the alarmprogram.sh to write out to a file in /tmp, so you can confirm that alarmprogram is being called, and also use that to dump out the environment, esp. the PATH, and make sure all that looks good.

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

    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: after OS/Informix upgrade alarmprogram not backing up logical logs automagically

    Posted Tue April 12, 2022 09:21 AM

    BACKUPLOGS is set to Y and I tried the ontape command and it works.

     

    Guess its time to add debug lines in the alarmprogram script.

     

    john

     




    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: after OS/Informix upgrade alarmprogram not backing up logical logs automagically

    IBM Champion
    Posted Tue April 12, 2022 07:36 AM
    Edited by System Fri January 20, 2023 04:30 PM
    One thing to check out is see if ksh is installed. On some Linux distributions the 'ksh' is just a symlink to bash which doesn't always play nicely with all parts of alarmprogram.sh
    yum install ksh

    Also, check to see if running "ontape -a -d" manually works as expected to back up the logs to check for any other permissions or settings that might be causing a problem.

    ------------------------------
    Thomas Beebe
    Vice President
    xDB Systems, Inc
    Woodbridge VA
    5713399029
    ------------------------------

    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: after OS/Informix upgrade alarmprogram not backing up logical logs automagically

    Posted Tue April 12, 2022 09:27 AM

    I've checked all permissions that I could think of and looked at all environment variables.  And looks like have ksh

     

    ksh --version

      version         sh (AT&T Research) 93u+ 2012-08-01

     

    so guess I need to make sure the alarmprogram is being kicked off – so debug coding I go

     

    john

     




    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: after OS/Informix upgrade alarmprogram not backing up logical logs automagically

    IBM Champion
    Posted Tue April 12, 2022 09:38 AM
    Make sure that you echo out the value of $PATH to a file as one of your debug messages at the start of alarmprogram.sh. 

    Another thing to check is:  onstat -g cfg full LTAPEDEV and make sure that it confirms that it is NOT set to /dev/null, even though I know that it is set to /backups in the onconfig.

    Are your used logical logs showing up as backed up with onstat -l, (flags = U-B*), or do you see some as U-- ?  When you switch logs, and the flag of the old log shows U-B, then that indicates Informix still thinks that log backups should go to /dev/null.

    Also, the Informix log will normally show if it tried to backup a log, but failed.  if you see no messages when switching a log about trying to perform a log backup, then that would also indicate that Informix thinks that the logs do not need to be backed up.

    Mike

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

    Original Message


  • 7.  RE: after OS/Informix upgrade alarmprogram not backing up logical logs automagically

    Posted Tue April 12, 2022 12:04 PM

    I added a few echo commands to a file in /tmp to the alarmprogram to debug, saved it and generated a new logical log and of course it started to work.  Removed the debug stuff, saved alarmprogram and still works. 

     

    Seems opening and saving the file fixed whatever was the problem.

     

    Thanks for the ideas and feedback

     

    john

     




    Original Message