[Bug-tar] gtar errors with large files

[Michael . Walsh]

Hi

I am not sure if this is the correct forum for this query, if not please
ignore this message, but if it is perhaps you can offer me some advice.

Background.

I am an Oracle DBA maintaining some Oracle instances on HP-UX 11.0. The
database consists of some large datafiles (some more than 8Gb), therefore
use of the hp-ux tar is not an option. I prefer tar to fbackup when writing
directly to tape as it allows the flexibility to add to archives rather then
'all-at-once' approach of fbackup.

I down loaded the prebuilt version of gtar for HP-UX from
hpux.connect.org.uk and it worked very well for my test system. However when
I tried it on the production system I got the following errors 

/usr/local/bin/tar uhvf /dev/rmt/c4t3d0BEST "/u05/oradata/ilmp/temp01.dbf" 
/usr/local/bin/tar: Removing leading `/' from member names 
u05/oradata/ilmp/temp01.dbf 
/usr/local/bin/tar: /u05/oradata/ilmp/temp01.dbf: file changed as we read it

/usr/local/bin/tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors 
O/S Message: No such file or directory 

While the timestamps etc of Oracle Datafiles may change while in backup-mode
it is acceptable. A similar run with regular-tar on smaller files seems to
work o.k. I have failed to reproduce this problem on the test system even
when generating dB changes during the backup.

Q. can you give more information on the source of this error. i.e. is it the
timestamp changing or the file contents or is the 'No Such file' the real
problem

Q. is there a minumum O/S version I should be using, I am on HP-UX (Quality
Pack Sep 2001

Q. have you seen anything like this before, is there a workaround.


Thanking you for your time.

regards

Michael Walsh
e-mail: address@hidden
phone: 



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