Just a few quick questions.. Does rsync copy open files? If so, does file integrity remain intact? I’m looking to backup IIS log files and maybe Oracle and SQL Server DB files. If rsync isn’t appropriate, what would you recommend? Thanks for your time, Mark J. de Jong ,.,.,.,...,.,,.,..,.,....,.,..,.,..,.,.,,.,...,..,,... Senior Network Engineer - Secure Dog Hosting, Inc. P.703.256.2869 F.703.256.3810 C.571.212.0027 http://www.secdog.com
On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 11:57:17AM -0400, dejongm@secdog.com wrote:> Just a few quick questions.. > Does rsync copy open files?Yes.> If so, does file integrity remain intact?No, not if it's being modified while rsync is copying it.> I'm looking to backup IIS log files and maybe Oracle and SQL Server DB > files. If rsync isn't appropriate, what would you recommend?Something application-specific that can work with the locks used by the products. Ask the vendors.> Thanks for your time, > > > Mark J. de Jong- Dave Dykstra
On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 11:57:17AM -0400, dejongm@secdog.com wrote:> Just a few quick questions.. > Does rsync copy open files? > If so, does file integrity remain intact? > I?m looking to backup IIS log files and maybe Oracle and SQL Server DB files. If rsync isn?t appropriate, what would you recommend?rsync is perfectly appropriate. You just need to prevent corrupting changes from happening while rsync runs. My guess is that IIS log files are, like apache's, append-only and not machine read. Therefore if copied during a change the worst that can happen is the copy will have a partial entry at the end. Oracle is far more delicate. _IF_ there is an update query in progress the tablespaces will be inconsistant. If you flush and copy the redo logs _after_ the tablespaces you can recover by replaying the redo logs just like you would after a crash. I don't reccomend that method but it will work. Far better is to sync and lock the tablespaces while rsync runs. The Oracle documentation includes poorly designed example code on how to do this in a section on on-line backups. The ultimate safe way is to shut down Oracle for the backups but i recognize the shutdown+startup time can be prohibitive. As for MS SQL server, I can't say. I expect it has facilities to assist in backups. In sum, what you need to do is bracket the rsync run with commands to stop and then restart those processes that may corrupt files. Any good backup system will provide a facility for doing so. -- ________________________________________________________________ J.W. Schultz Pegasystems Technologies email address: jw@pegasys.ws Remember Cernan and Schmitt