VERITAS Storage Foundation 4.1 Oracle Administrator's Guide

Accessing Regular VxFS Files as Quick I/O Files Prerelease 8 September 2005, 8:54am
92 VERITAS Storage Foundation for Oracle Administrator’s Guide
Accessing Regular VxFS Files as Quick I/O Files
You can access regular VxFS files as Quick I/O files using the ::cdev:vxfs: name extension.
While symbolic links are recommended because they provide easy file system management and
location transparency of database files, the drawback of using symbolic links is that you must
manage two sets of files (for instance, during database backup and restore).
Usage Notes
◆ When possible, use relative path names instead of absolute path names when creating symbolic
links to access regular files as Quick I/O files. Using relative path names prevents copies of the
symbolic link from referring to the original file when the directory is copied. This is important
if you are backing up or moving database files with a command that preserves the symbolic
link.
However, some applications require absolute path names. If a file is then relocated to another
directory, you must change the symbolic link to use the new absolute path. Alternatively, you
can put all the symbolic links in a directory separate from the data directories. For example,
you can create a directory named /database and put all the symbolic links there, with the
symbolic links pointing to absolute path names.
▼ To access an existing regular file as a Quick I/O file on a VxFS file system
1. Access the VxFS file system mount point containing the regular files:
$ cd /mount_point
2. Create the symbolic link:
$ mv filename .filename
$ ln -s .filename::cdev:vxfs: filename
Example
To access the VxFS file dbfile as a Quick I/O file:
$ cd /db01
$ mv dbfile .dbfile
$ ln -s .dbfile::cdev:vxfs: dbfile
To show the symbolic link created:
$ ls -lo .dbfile dbfile
-rw-r--r-- 1 oracle 104890368 Oct 2 13:42 .dbfile
lrwxrwxrwx 1 oracle 19 Oct 2 13:42 dbfile -> \
.dbfile::cdev:vxfs: