AIX

Hi Guys,

We normally have a backup and restore nightly on our Prod machines. We do this via customized script and all unattended. The dilemma that I'm having is the disabling of the cron after the restore.

I created a nim script to disable the cron after the restore has been completed. But some of the cron jobs in our Prod that runs every minute can get sneaked out and will sometimes run. The reason for this is that there's a 1 to 2 mins gap once the restore has completed which enables cron normally, and when the nim script to disable cron gets executed.

Is there a way to disable cron even before the restore gets completed? Or is this even possible?

I haven't used fb_script and CUSTOMIZATION_FILE on NIM yet. Not sure if this is the answer to my problem.

Any advise is greatly appreciated.


Regards,
Kaelu

Instead of disabling cron after the restore completes, why not disable cron before the restore starts?

Hi Don - I don't know how to disable cron before the restore starts, or how to update the mksysb file to disable the cron. Could you tell me how to do that if possible?

You said: "I created a nim script to disable the cron after the restore has been completed." So, since you know how to disable the cron after the restore has been completed, you must also know how to disable the cron at some other time. Use that knowledge to disable the cron before you start the restore instead of after the restore completes!

Maybe a another Idea could be to exclude the crontabs directory or the specific file /var/spool/cron/crontabs in your backup script and install the needed crontabs from another directory (e.g. crontab /backup/crontabs/root).

Regards
Ron

Hi,

Depending on your version of AIX, the process can be a little different when it comes to starting and stopping the cron service. What version are you using?

Regards

Dave

I can't do this, once you restored an AIX mksysb, cron is automatically started. This is the nim script resource that I run after the restore has completed in our DR box.

Code:

#!/bin/ksh
#  CUSTOMIZING SCRIPT to set the hostname, disable cron
#export LOGFILE=/`basename $0 .ksh`.$(date +%Y%m%d.%H%M.log)
#exec >${LOGFILE} 2>&1
#echo "\n===========\nStarting `basename $0` at `date`\n===========================\n"
# Change hostname
#chdev -l inet0 -a hostname=drserver
# Update /etc/inittab (but back it up first)
exec 1>/var/log/node_bosinst.log
exec 2>&1
cp /etc/inittab /etc/inittab.bak.$(date +%Y%m%d)
chitab "cron:23456789:off:/usr/sbin/cron"
refresh -s inetd
#echo "\n==============\nCompleting `basename $0` at `date`\n===================\n"
#exit 0

[QUOTE] Thanks Ron. This is actually my last resort on fixing this. I'm just thinking of any other way of disabling cron in the mksysb or right after the restore without any delay of running cron jobs that runs every minute.

7100-03-03-1415