SAP Note 18020 - OnTape/OnArchive: Errors during remote save on IBM

Symptom:

When running an OnTape backup on a remote tape device, the backup terminates after the 1st tape with error 5 "i/o-error". OnArchive is also affected.

Cause and prerequisites

A remote tape archive is carried out by Informix using the dd command. Here, the stderr output of the Informix dd command is analyzed, and this is generally as follows:
130+1 records in
130+1 records out

Instead, for AIX, the following appears:
dd: 130+1 records in
dd: 130+1 records out

Solution

The following workaround should solve the problem:

• Log on as root on the machine with the tape drive

• Rename original "dd" program (-> mv /bin/dd /bin/dd_orig)

• Create a small shell script with the name "/bin/dd": #!/bin/sh
  LANG=C
  /bin/dd_orig $*

• Set the access authorizations: chmod 755 /bin/dd

• Test run:
  
  Log on to the database machine and execute the following command:
  "remsh dd if=/etc/termcap of=/dev/null"

This should solve the problems with non-functioning tape recognition and with the used tapes. If you use this note in your own system and it sorts out any errors that are not mentioned in the symptoms above, report this to the SAP Informix 2nd Level Hotline, so that we can add it to the key words in this note.

Additional key words

AIX, OnTape, OnArchive, inf5