RDF System Management Manual for J-series and H-series RVUs (RDF 1.10)

5 Critical Operations, Special Situations, and Error
Conditions
When running RDF, there are a number of critical operations and situations that need careful
consideration. Understanding all aspects of these operations and situations is essential.
Understanding critical operations ensures that you perform said operations correctly, quickly, and
efficiently. Understanding critical situations and error conditions ensures that you achieve resolution
as quickly as possible.
This chapter, which is directed to both system managers and operators, discusses the following
topics:
• “Recovering From File System Errors” (page 113)
• “Handling Disk Space Problems” (page 116)
• “Exceeding the Maximum Number of Concurrent File Opens” (page 116)
• “Responding to Operational Failures” (page 117)
• “Stopping RDF” (page 124)
• “Restarting RDF” (page 127)
• “Carrying Out a Planned Switchover” (page 127)
• “Takeover Operations” (page 130)
• “Reading the Backup Database (BROWSE versus STABLE Access)” (page 140)
• “Access to Backup Databases with Stable Access” (page 141)
• “RDF and NonStop SQL DDL Operations” (page 142)
• “RDF and NonStop SQL/MX Operations” (page 144)
• “Backing Up Image Trail Files” (page 144)
• “TMF and Online Dumps on the Backup System” (page 145)
• “Doing FUP RELOAD Operations With Updaters Running” (page 146)
• “Exception File Optimization” (page 146)
• “Switching Disks on Updater UPDATEVOLUMES” (page 146)
• “Online Remirroring of Updater SUBVOLUMES” (page 147)
Recovering From File System Errors
All RDF processes can encounter file system error conditions. If it is RDFCOM, it reports an error
message that includes the file system error in the RDFCOM Outfile. For any other RDF process (the
monitor, the extractor, the receiver, the purger, the updater, or RDFNET), an RDF event is generated
in the EMS event log, and this event includes the specific file system error and any additional
information that is available. Of particular importance are RDF event messages 700, 705, and
739. As an example, file-system error 59 appears in the following RDF event message 705:
10:59 \RDF05 $WU02 705 File open error 59 on $DATA07.QD004378.RFILE02
Table 10, 5-2, and 5-3 list the most common file system error numbers you might encounter and
each entry provides an appropriate recovery action. For every error condition reported by RDFCOM
as well as for any RDF event, you are also given a detailed explanation of the cause, effect, and
recovery action, and these are all listed in Appendix C.
To analyze a file system error, see the appropriate table in this discussion, reading about any
corrective action specific to RDF. Then, for further information about the error (its cause, effect,
Recovering From File System Errors 113