RE: BDB recovery after power outage

[Frank Swasey <Frank.Swasey@uvm.edu>]

Today at 6:42am, Quanah Gibson-Mount wrote:

> To say that BDB is not a viable backend because one has not taken the time 
> to investigate how to use the software is flawed.

I agree with your point.  I have not taken the time necessary to fully 
understand BDB.  However, I have experimented with BDB backend.  I have 
used it in test instances and have found it to not perform as well as 
LDBM/Berkeley.  I do not have the time to read the programmer's 
reference that Sleepycat has made available and figure out what a BDB 
database admin needs to know.  Sleepycat has (to my knowledge) not made 
a BDB DBA's guide available.  You are required to read the Programmer's 
API reference and infer what a DBA needs to do.  I am not a DBA, I am a 
systems administrator/programmer.  I don't have any interest in becoming 
a DBA and all my DBA's have no interest in anything other than Oracle.  

Therefore, I think the correct point is that unless you are a skilled 
BDB DBA, you should not be using the BDB backend until someone who is a 
skilled BDB DBA puts together a guide to what you need to know to use 
BDB with OpenLDAP.

Now, Howard stated that the BDB backend originally did the db_recover 
for you.  I haven't seen any mention that that had changed (prior to 
Howard's announcement here over the weekend) and as I stated, there's no 
mention of db_recover in any of the OpenLDAP documentation (nor based on 
a find . -type f | xargs grep db_recover) in any of the OpenLDAP source 
files -- so there isn't even a programmatical comment that it had been 
removed.

My real concern here is that I see the BDB backend as being pushed but 
there seems to be a refusal to even deal with the issue of putting 
together a quick start document about what the beginning BDB backend DBA 
needs to know.  Yes, I do feel that is something that needs to come out 
of the OpenLDAP documentation because it is OpenLDAP that is using BDB.  
Would it be nice if Sleepycat provided that documentation -- hell yes.  
Are they going to?  I'm not going to hold my breath.

-- 
Frank Swasey                    | http://www.uvm.edu/~fcs
Systems Programmer              | Always remember: You are UNIQUE,
University of Vermont           |    just like everyone else.
                    === God Bless Us All ===