Unix Backup and Recovery

Automating Informix Startup: The dbstart.informix.sh Script

Not having a global configuration file makes a lot of things more difficult, one of them being backups. When writing a shell script to back up all Informix instances on a given machine, how do you know what instances to back up? You can’t ask Informix, which definitely does not know about the other instances. I would like to suggest a different method of starting Informix that also would make backups easier. Let’s start with the basics.

In order for an Informix database to be started up after a system reboot, a startup script must be placed somewhere in /etc. Startup scripts are run by root and, therefore, should be owned by root and placed in a directory that root controls. A startup script in /etc should not be calling a startup script in Informix’s home directory. However, this creates an extra task for both the SAs and DBAs. The DBA must find an SA every time he wants to add a new instance to the startup script. The SAs would rather not have to do this, but they don’t want root running shell scripts found in Informix’s home directory. The SAs also are normally in charge of backups, and this is one way to find out that there is a new instance to back up.

How does Oracle accomplish this task? It’s as simple as the oratab file. The start-up scripts are in a directory owned by root, and the oratab file is in a directory owned by the oracle ID. The startup script starts up any instances in the oratab file that have a ...