Solaris

hi ,

we are using Veritas netbackup 5 to backup all databases at our site.
i noticed lately that a specific filesystem on the netbackup servers in running critically out of space , after some investigations i found that there are images that are increasing in size everytime a backup is taken .
the images are found under "/opt/openv/netbackup/db/images" .
my question is :
1 - Is it safe to delete these database images .
2 - these images are used for what .

please note :that we are running solaris 8 over sparc .

thanks for ur help
cheers

Late Answer:

NetBackup stores all information from Backups in its Database.
It records the client,the file being backuped, the Tape that was used,...
Every new backup /restore will store infos to this database.
VERITAS recommends to install NetBackup and the Backup Catalog on a growable Filesystem like Veritas Filesystem.

What you can do:

x) Backup the complete NetBackup Server, plug in a bigger hard disk,
re-install the OS, install NetBackup and restore from Tape

Or:

x) Assuming you have 1 disk:

Insert a second disk to your server, create a Filesystem, and tell NetBackup
to backup the DB/Catalog to the new disk/mountpoint. Manually initate a DB/Catalog Backup to the new location. Then tell netbackup to use this disk a the primary source for the DB/Catalog. Now all Database data is on the new,bigger disk

thanks networkr@k

i got what u said ; but i was wondering if u could tell me the steps to "initate a DB/Catalog Backup to the new location" .

10 x cheers

@ppass:

I will test it for you on monday at work...
I will move the catalog/db to a new disk and will post the necessary tasks and results.

My test setup:

x) NetBackup 4.5 FP6 running on Solaris 9 SPARC (E250)

x) Master and Media Server on the same machine

I will manually shrink the filesystem to run in your problem of to less space.

just curious ... why not just move the directory to a bigger filesystem and keep the same path either by sym-linking or by mounting?

Just Ice :

this is a good suggestion but the file system that the image currently is mounted is / .

i only have 2 80 GB hardisks that are mirrored ,so maybe making a simlink would work but i can not see how i can mount it to another file system .
please note that in the hardisk there are no more free spcace , all space are mounted and partitioned .
cheers

if you have space in another filesystem and you only want to use it for the database in question, mount that filesystem into /mnt and then copy the database over into it, diff the copy and the source and then remove the source, and then umount the filesystem on /mnt and remount it on /opt/openv/netbackup/db/images ... make sure you update /etc/vfstab ...

if you don't want to do through all that trouble, create a new directory in a bigger filesystem, move the database to it, and then make /opt/openv/netbackup/db/images a symlink to it ...

... do verify that netbackup will work with symlinked paths before you thrash your server data ...