I have heard that you can corrupt a database when copying it with active connections. I am wondering if incremental windows backups are different than a 'copy'.

We have a number of clients that have Network administrators with larger networks. I am certain many run incremental backups on their networks periodically throughout the day while people are actively using the database. In the 12 years or so that we have been operating (from Firebird 1.0 to now with Firebird 2.1) this way, we have never had an issue with a corrupt database, other than when we screw up the metadata ourselves :-).

We schedule gbak backups to run each night on the databases. This has worked fine in the past.

We just had an issue at a site and the client was thinking they could use their Incremental Backups on their network to solve the issue. They were surprised to see that the database was being missed This is why I posted to find a solution.

Like Jerry said, we could schedule Firebird Backups to run periodically throughout the day (before their incrementals) but that seems like a lot of overhead as the databases are quite large and can take up to 30 minutes to backup up each time.

Todd

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "Benno" <iblist@...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> you could be happy the database was missed, because one of the few things to create a defect firebird database is copying the database while it has active connections.
>
> I use GBAK to create automated backups of my databases every night. You can do that with a live database and even with connected users, it simply creates a "snapshot" of the state of the database at the moment you start GBAK.
>
> I run it on windows and simply have a number of scheduled tasks to do the backup work.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Benno
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: todderamaa
> To: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Wednesday, February 29, 2012 8:21 PM
> Subject: [firebird-support] Re: Timestamp of Database File
>
>
>
>
>
> --- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Thomas Steinmaurer <ts@> wrote:
> >
> > > I just did a test in our environment. I logged into the database and made a change. The date modified on the database file wasn't updated. But when I logged out of the database, the date modified was updated. I was the only one logged into the database at the time.
> > >
> > > I logged into a client site where many users are connected to the database. I made a change in the data, but when I logged out, the date modified on the database file was not changed.
> > >
> > > Does it have something to do with the last person having to log out of the database?
> >
> > Yes. The timestamp changes when the last connection disconnects.
> >
> >
>
> Is there anyway around this? The client runs incremental backups on their server 3 times a day. The database is getting missed because people stay logged into the database.
>
> I was wondering if there was something we could do to the database in our application that would result in the Date Modified to be updated.
>
> Todd
>
> > --
> > With regards,
> > Thomas Steinmaurer (^TS^)
> > Firebird Technology Evangelist
> >
> > http://www.upscene.com/
> > http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/firebird-foundation/
> >
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>