Back ups

[apsrbstar]

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a little help with back up routines.

I am running SX.enterprise 5.6.063 on Progress 9.1E (well, I'm fairly sure it's E - perhaps someone can help me find that out while we're on the job) running on Linux Redhat and the tape drive back up we have been using is definitely past it's point of usefulness, so I would like to drag our backups kicking and screaming into the 20th Century (har-di-har). I would like to run probkup nightly to back up onto a Windows server on the same network (probably offsite, but I'm sure I can sort that out on my own). Can anyone point me in the right direction to get started? Or advise me that I'm completely barking up the wrong tree, and put me on the right track...

Thank you!

 

[Cringer]

I'm going to move this into the DB Admin forum as you'll likely get a better response there.

 

[apsrbstar]

I'm going to move this into the DB Admin forum as you'll likely get a better response there.

Ok, thanks!

 

[TomBascom]

cat $DLC/version

To find out what specific version of Progress you have. V9, of course, is ancient, obsolete and unsupported. And it is from the previous century. You should upgrade.

What part of your scheme do you need help with? Yes, probkup to another server makes plenty of sense. Personally, I wouldn't choose a Windows box

 

[apsrbstar]

Unfortunately, this installation must not follow accepted standard, since "version" is not a recognised directory name at the root directory. I'm struggling to find it at t he moment, but I'm sure I can sort that out another way.

Basically, I have no idea where to start with probkup. I presume to schedule it I would need a crontab script. I know the location and name of the database, so I guess my script would have to include navigating to the folder, and then the command would be some formation of the probkup command with the db name, the location I want to back up to. I would also need to decide whether to run the back up on- or off-line, and I have no idea what criteria would effect that decision. If I go for offline, I'd need to know how I bring the db down and then back up (although, that currently happens for the tape back up, so maybe I can use that..?). There's probably more I'm totally ignorant of.

 

[TomBascom]

That sounds like $DLC is undefined. $DLC points to the Progress install directory. It must always be in the environment if you are going to successfully run Progress.

Presuming that you get that taken care of...

probkup online dbname /bkup/dbname.pbk -com

Will create a backup of "dbname" in a file named /bkup/dbname.pbk. -com will "compress" the backup in the sense that it will skip empty space -- not in the sense of a "zip" style compress. Most backedup databases will compress 5:1 or better if you then zip them.

The command above will create a single .pbk file (the extension can be whatever you'd like, I like .pbk). If you have enabled "large files" and your OS and filesystems support them you are all set. If you have not you should. If you cannot use large files for some reason and your backup exceeds 2GB then you will need to create a multi-volume backup using the -vs parameter (volume size). That's complicated and should be pointless so I won't go into it.

So once you have /bkup/dbname.pbk, compress it with your favorite zipping tool (I usually use gzip) and then transfer to some external server.

BTW -- if you are not using after-imaging you should correct that oversight immediately. http://dbappraise.com/ppt/ai.pptx

 

[apsrbstar]

Great, thanks for the info.

The $DLC thing is a bit worrying - I'll see if I can find anything on that...
I'd rather point the backup directly to the alternate server, since I would be looking to do a daily backup, but I'm sure google can tell me how to point to a network server on the command line.

BTW, we are using after-imaging, although if I ever needed to use it, I'd have to refresh myself in a bit of a hurry!

Once again, thanks for the info. I hope not to need any more help with this...

 

[TomBascom]

DLC may not be set for users who are not Progress end-users. Assuming that Progress is in the default install directory of /usr/dlc you just need to:

DLC=/usr/dlc
export DLC

It also helps to add:

PATH=$DLC/bin:$PATH

And "Bob's you uncle!".

If you have the remote server's filesystem mounted (perhaps via SAMBA) then you can indeed just write to it directly.

But if you have to use sftp or something it becomes a two-step process.

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

If you have space I would suggest backing up the DB locally, and then copy/move/ftp the file over to the Winbox. That way a network hiccup won't prevent your DB from being backed up. But maybe your network is more reliable than mine.

 

[apsrbstar]

Sensible advisce, thank you!

 

[apsrbstar]

Tom,

In looking for the install location, am I looking for the dlc folder? If so, I have /app/live/rd/dlc (and indeed, running cat dlc/version from /app/live/rd gave me "PROGRESS Version 9.1E04" as the version number). Would you instruction translate in my environment to typing DLC-/app/live/rd/dlc [Enter] EXPORT DLC on the command line?

DLC=/usr/dlc
export DLC

I wonder if this could create an issue as I have 4 DBs running, the same details would exist for /app/newver/rd/dlc and /app/report/rd/dlc. I also have a 10.2B04 database in a different folder.

Don't ask!

 

[RealHeavyDude]

When you are running two different version of Progress/OpenEdge on the same machine then it might not be a good idea to set the DLC environment variable on the operating system level because you will get problems. Instead you need to set the DLC environment variable and then extension to PATH in all of your scripts. Additionally you can call $DLC/bin/proenv ( where $DLC is the path to one of the installations ) which will set the necessary environment specific to the installation.

Heavy Regards, RealHeavyDude.

P.S. - from a technical point it is absolutely valid to have different versions of Progress/OpenEdge running on the same machine. From an administrative point of view I would try to avoid it whenever possible. It is pretty easy to upgrade from 9.1E04 to OE10.2.