[ale] Database Info Thread

[Julie Thornton]

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> -------- Original Message --------
>
> Well, I really hate replying to my own message, but I found out the
problem.
> The '/' root partition was full. Evidently the BRU backup program blew up
a
> night or two ago and filled up the drive with a huge file. After I cleaned
up
> the mess, everything started working again.

There's not really enough in the message below to make a strong assertion as
to
what the problem was; however, I will give you my best guess.

BRU is designed to write to tape drives.  On Linux, this would typically be
/dev/st0 and /dev/nst0 (rewinding and non-rewinding, respectfully).  During
the
installation you must enter the name of your device.  While this should be
an
innocent entry, any/all typos will lead to problems.

For example, let's say you enter "stO" instead of "st0."  If you look
carefully,
you should notice that stO contains an upper case oh (O) while the second
entry,
st0, uses a zero (0).  That's all it takes!  In the case of the upper case
"O,"
BRU would do what it has been told to do (albeit unknowingly) - write the
backup
to the file /dev/stO.  Doesn't exist?  No problem, BRU will create it.  It
usually
doesn't take long after the backup has begun to fill the root partition.  We
get
this call about once a month.

The best way to find this culprit is with the following command:

    ls -lt  /dev | head

This will list about the ten most recently written files in the /dev
directory.
What you would be looking for is a file, a rather large file, that doesn't
belong:

    -rw-r--r--   1 root     root      4874240 Sep 30 11:21 stO

The above file is bad!  This shows a file that has a recent creation date,
is not
a [c]haracter special file, contains a size instead of a major/minor
number....
All-in-all, it does not belong.  It should be removed and the /etc/brutab
file
corrected.

The two files below show what should be found:

    crw-rw----   1 root     disk       9, 128 May  5  1998 /dev/nst0
    crw-rw----   1 root     disk       9,   0 May  5  1998 /dev/st0

In the above case, nst0 and st0 contain an older date, are [c]haracter
special
(crw....), are both major 9 with minor 128 and 0.  These are correct.


Wow, that's a lot of explaining - not sure you wanted or needed that but,
hey,
there it is.  Hope it helps :o)

Sincerely,
Darrell
Technical Support Manager

--
TechSupport                            support at estinc.com
"The BRU Guys"                         Visit our Web page:
Enhanced Software Technologies, Inc.   http://www.estinc.com/
(602) 470-1333 voice                   (602) 470-1116 fax



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