Ok ! Let me describe how this issue was solved:
1) There was definitely a corruption issue caused by a problem with vmware tools on solaris 10. When the network interface had high transfer/load operations (sample: copy of a 2 GB DB ....), it just stoped working, in the middle of the operation. To put the interface working again, I had to disconnect and connect the network interface again (in the vmware interface !).
Basically, I had to unistall vmware tools on solaris virtual machine.
There was one catch, the highest transfer rates that could be achieved was about 300 Kb. Basically I could take hours to perform a simple ftp transfer of a 2 GB database, but there wasn´t any corruption at all.
How to prove/test that there is/inst´t any corruption. I just packed (on the source machine) the database dump into a tar file (yes, an extra 20kb), but after the download complete, on the target server, I was able to untar the file, and if the untar operation was sucessfull that proved that there wasn´t any corruption on the file that was just transfered.
2) After being sure that the dump was ok, I got a diferent error:
Apr 17 14:24:20 2012: Backup Server: 4.188.1.1: Database wfcv2: 158936 kilobytes (1%) LOADED.
Apr 17 14:24:47 2012: Backup Server: 4.188.1.1: Database wfcv2: 303212 kilobytes (2%) LOADED.
Apr 17 14:25:16 2012: Backup Server: 4.188.1.1: Database wfcv2: 447104 kilobytes (3%) LOADED.
Apr 17 14:25:39 2012: Backup Server: 4.124.2.1: Archive API error for device='compress::1::/data4/20120413_wfcv2_zdump::000': Vendor application name=Compress API, Library version=1, API routine=syb_read(), Message=syb_read: gzread() error=0, msg=Error 0
Apr 17 14:25:39 2012: Backup Server: 4.124.2.1: Archive API error for device='compress::1::/data4/20120413_wfcv2_zdump::000': Vendor application name=Compress API, Library version=1, API routine=syb_close(), Message=syb_close: gzclose() error=-3 msg=Input/output buffer is corrupt
Apr 17 14:25:39 2012: Backup Server: 6.32.2.3: compress::1::/data4/20120413_wfcv2_zdump::000: volume not valid or not requested (server: , session id: 20.)
Apr 17 14:25:39 2012: Backup Server: 1.14.2.4: Unrecoverable I/O or volume error. This DUMP or LOAD session must exit.
Ok ! Sybase configuration issues !
I had to configure some parameters that were related to load operations, such as:
number of large i/o buffers -> 32
max memory
And a Solaris issue !
I also had to adjust the Operating System Shared Memory to the sybase engine ... !
And I finally was able to load the DB (size > 2.1 GB) !
;-) Cheers !
Yes is a good idea, if the DB is spread across different devices. ( that ideally would be on different volumes ). The percentage of the volume of corruption would be less. However to restore you still have to restore the whole DB, which in separate devices and volumes can be faster. ( I/O is spread, less concurrency )
No. You have to recover the Db(s) that the corrupted device holds. So if you have a DB that has 1 corrupt device and you have those logical connections (good practice), you just need to change on OS, the connection to the new physical device. Then restore DB.
How is you replication ? Repserver or disk mirroring? For repserver, i do not think so, your source ASE would stop functioning, and you would have to stop replication to restore the db. Disk mirroring I don't know.
Response to updated question:
My point 2 was:
- You will need to recover the whole db, unless you know exactly which objects where present on that device (and segments of it) that got corrupted, if yes then you can rebuild them manually( tables, procs, views... ). If you don't know or the labour to do it manually is too great, complete db recover.
What I mentioned about the logical connections was this, for example:
You have DB called TEST1 on the the following devices:
data01
data04
log02
data03
When you create the device with disk init, you have to give the path. But the path is not directed to the device itself, it goes to a soft link. Your data01 for example:
disk init.... physname='..sybase/data01.dat" ...
On the OS that sybase/data01.dat will be pointing to /dev/data01.dat. This way if you need on the OS to replace a corrupted device, you won't have to rebuild the database, you just create a new raw file, point data01.dat to it, and on DB restore data (LOAD). Faster process, than drop old DB, create new, load.
Well I'm pretty sure your errorlog would have some information about that corrupted device and also about your dumps had issues.
If your dumps were successfully dumped you should be able to use them on your restore (good devices). So I don't really get why you had to go back so many days. The thing is for instance if you have a corrupted device, it will manifest whenever some action tries to use it, (I/O). So your dumps would have failed i believe.
Best Answer
Take a look at the ASE Archive Database feature.
This features allows you to mount your dump file(s) as a read-only database; once mounted you can access the tables in the database with your desired
selectqueries.Technically ...
scratchdatabase for managing the mountFor an example of setting up the scratch and archive databases, see the Reference manual entry for the create archive database command.