Product

• Brisque™ Serve 4.0
• Timna™ 3.0

Platform

• E30—Victory
• 43P–140—Tiger1
• 43P–150—Tiger2
• F50—Wildcat (2 and 4 CPUs)
• 44P–170—Hammerhead
• 6F1—Condor (2,4 and 6 CPUs)

Operating system

IBM^® AIX 4.2.1 or IBM AIX 4.3.3

Error

Failed to retrieve files

Symptoms

When you retrieve files/folders via the Filetrak application, an error message appears, and the following saveset is incorrectly recorded in the database:
2002-09-20 15:42:40 105015 .2.34008e+09Archive.41 archive.002

Cause

The system's time zone is changed to allow for daylight savings time (DST).

For example, if the system time zone is set to WET (Israel), mminfo displays the time of the saveset at 12.00. If you change the time zone to GMT (UK), mminfo displays the time of the saveset at 10.00, because it converts the time reference saved in the Legato database to the current time zone. The time of 12.00 is stored in the Informix database, because Brisque Serve or Timna does not adjust for time differences when you retrieve files/folders via the Filetrak application.
When you change the time zone in SMIT to allow for DST from the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, the Legato adjustment algorithm adds one hour to the archive time to compensate. However, Brisque Serve or Timna does not add the extra hour, which creates a time difference of one hour between the system clocks.

Background

UNIX system time:

The UNIX timer records the system date and time as the accumulation of seconds from the epoch of 00:00:00 GMT, Jan. 1, 1970. Therefore, the system time is absolute and is not related to the Brisque Serve or Timna time zone and DST settings that you make.
UNIX system operations are recorded using the UNIX system time variable.
For example, the UNIX file system time stamps a file that you interact with by recording the amount of seconds that have accumulated from the epoch at the time of the interaction. UNIX adjusts the system date and time (in seconds from the epoch), using the current time zone and DST settings, and converts the accumulation of seconds into a easily-recognizable time and date string format. For example, the date and time string displays when you run the ls and date commands.

Legato:

The Legato application records the date and time in the database as the accumulation of seconds an event occurs from the epoch of 00:00:00 GMT, Jan. 1, 1970. The date and time information is saved in the saveset by mminfo, which adjusts the time based on the current environment settings.

Brisque Serve or Timna:

When archiving is performed, Brisque Serve or Timna records the time at which the archive is performed as a string in the Informix database. That is, the local time is recorded and not the system time as per the Legato application. When the retrieve operation is performed, the archive time is received from the Informix database and passed on to the Legato's recover command.

DST:

UNIX has a DST flag, which you can set via SMIT. If you set the DST flag, the system clock is automatically moved by one hour per predefined schedule. This applies for some of the states in US.

Solution

To prevent this problem from occurring in future, do not run the following script to synchronize the Legato application with the archiver time:
query_legato.sh | saveset_update c > /tmp/saveset_update.log &

When this script is run, yyye+0xxx type savesets are created.

Note:

• This script does not support Networker 6.0
• This script will be removed from Brisque Serve version 4.0.34

See also

Technical contact(s)

Lev Weissman

Submitted by

Lev Weissman

Date submitted

03 Mar 2003