Platform Versions:
IDS 7.24.UC1
AIX 4.3.2
ADSM Server Version 3, Release 1, Level 1.5
ADSM Client Version 2, Release 1, Level 0.6

I have been performing backup and recovery testing under various scenarios with unpredictable results using the above configuration. I have been performing onbar -b -L 0 and onbar -b -L 1 backups while using onbar -r -n <logid> for my restore. I performed my first restore and several dbSpaces were not restored (I did not have entries in either the online.log or bar_act.log for these dbSpaces). The dbSpaces were marked down after the restore. I was told by Informix support that the following error messages in my bar_act.log indicated a CRITICAL failure during my backup:

1999-01-19 21:49:32 43090  16884 ERROR: Unable to open connection to server: could not fork server connection.
1999-01-19 21:49:32 16884  12948 The ON-Bar process 43090 exited with a
problem (exit code 130 (0x82), signal -1).

These critical failures created a corrupt backup for the entire server. To complicate matters the onbar command issued (onbar -b -L 1) returned with a return code of 0. I was told this was to be expected!

Has anyone else experienced these types of problems? What did you do to work around the issue?

I also find it unusual that onbar will not wait for additional ADSM server resources to come available. I was told to control this by lowering the BAR_MAX_BACKUP onconfig parameter. I have found this to be difficult as the number of available ADSM resources can change from time to time. Does anyone have any ideas for this issue?

Thanks In Advance,
Doug Hayes
DBA, Senco Products Inc
Dhayes AT senco DOT com