Looks like you're backing up a database while it's online and not in
backup mode - either take it offline when you're doing your backups,
use a bpstart/bpend_notify pair to put it in and out of backup mode,
or exclude the .dbfs from the backups and backup the database using
exp or rman.

The "padding with zeros" message means the file changed between the
start of the backup and the end of it. Not a useful backup for an
oracle database.

-Charlie

On 10/6/05, Karl.Rossing AT federated DOT ca <Karl.Rossing AT federated DOT ca> 
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I got this yesterday in one of my server logs:
>
> 10/6/2005 2:23:45 AM - Error bpbrm(pid=1776) from client noname: ERR - File
> /db/db1.dbf shrunk by 59719680 bytes, padding with zeros
>
> What does padding with zero's mean?