Adam -

Thank you for taking so much time with your informative answer. Yes, it
is time I broke out the Perl book and write a backup script for the DB's.

At this time I cannot determine if there is any problems with the DB's I
am getting the permissions problem. I am not a Linux guru...just know
enough to do the basics. One option I am considering is to remove
Firebird with the RPM uninstall and remove the DB's (on the backup
server) and reinstall Firebird (FirebirdSS 1.5) with the hope that the
permissions problem will be corrected. Then I'll restore the Firebird
backups on the backup server. Does this sound reasonable?

Todd

Adam wrote:

> > Thank you for the response, and please accept my apologies for the
> > skimpy information. However I have inherited the systems and am trying
> > to figure out what happens when one system is copied on top of another
> > with the Linux rsync. FirebirdSS-1.5 is running on both systems when I
> > do a "ps -A | grep fbserver", but only one server is online; the other
> > is suppose to be a backup server in case the primary server fails.
>
>
> If you are lucky, the source database is not in use at the time rsync
> runs. By lucky, I mean that no connections or transactions are started
> or ended and the garbage collection is not running (ie, the database
> engine is doing nothing to the file for the entire time the file is
> being copied). For a tiny database of a few MB (and a fast rsync
> link), you may get away with it, but much larger and the database file
> could be modified while the copy is taking place.
>
> The more normal case would be that something happens during the copy.
> For example, someone starts a new transaction. In this case, the TIP
> in your destination database file won't be aware of this transaction,
> however by the time rsync reads the data page, it copies some data
> from that transaction. It doesn't take too much imagination to realise
> that this is not a good thing at all.
>
> Another example, you copy an index page before a data page of the
> given table. Between reading the index page and reading the data page,
> someone inserts a new record, but the index will not contain this
> record. You may then find yourself violating unique constraints left
> right and centre (because Firebird just looks into the index to
> determine whether a value exists rather than the slow operation of
> reading the entire table). Worse still, a backup will not restore
> easily if it contains a table that contains duplicates in a unique
> constrained field!
>
> Worse still, and although I can not understand how it is possible,
> there have been reports about the source database being corrupted by
> copying it using a file system level copy utility.
>
> In case you haven't guessed what I am hinting at yet, DO NOT RSYNC /
> XCOPY / FTP / ZIP / or whatever a database file that is in use.
>
> There are two things you may wish to consider to solve your problem.
> If you are after a complete replication, then various replications
> tools are available that work with Firebird. If you are simply after
> are usable backup copy on a different server, then you can use the
> gbak tool that ships with Firebird to safely generate a backup file.
>
> One side note, if you are using Firebird 2, there is a new backup
> utility (NBackup) which does give the option of doing file system
> level things to the database while it is active. You need to first put
> the database into a special mode where it maintains a sort of change
> log but keeps the database file itself stable. After you have finished
> with rsync, you need to use the utility to tell the firebird your
> backup is finished and it will merge the changelog into the main
> database file. Firebird 2 is not production stable, it is release
> candidate level, so specific questions regarding it are off topic in
> this list (until it becomes classified as stable), so you will need to
> google for the appropriate documents for this feature if interested.
>
> Adam
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
> Visit http://firebird.sourceforge.net and click the Resources item
> on the main (top) menu. Try Knowledgebase and FAQ links !
>
> Also search the knowledgebases at http://www.ibphoenix.com
>
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