Firebird recovery tools and techniques by IBSurgeon
- 1. Firebird database recovery: tools and techniques Alexey Kovyazin IBSurgeon www.ib-aid.com www.ibsurgeon.com www.ibase.ru Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 1
- 2. Thanks to sponsors! Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 2
- 3. About IBSurgeon ● Firebird and InterBase recovery and optimization: tools and services ● Platinum sponsor of Firebird Foundation ● Since 2002 ● Moscow, Russia Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 3
- 4. Typical corruption «environment» ● No backups ● No administrator ● Unreliable hardware or wrong configuration of hardware ● Big database and 24/7 workmode – can’t do backup/restore ● Corruption never happened before or no responsible persons Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 4
- 5. Behind the corruption ● Hardware failure ● Administrators/developers failures ● Server bugs ● Mr. Murhy and his laws:) Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 5
- 6. Corruption from user's point of view ● Unavailable database — i.e., cannot connect there, with various errors ● Errors while trying SELECT/UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE ● Low performance ● «Something is wrong» Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 6
- 7. Corruption from the server point of view ● Cannot build internal database image – System data lost? – Transactions pages lost? ● Cannot read some records – Record is corrupted? ● Indices corruption Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 7
- 8. Symptoms of corruptions Corruptions appear at: 1.Users screen (“internal Firebird software consistency check” error message) 2.In firebird.log Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 8
- 9. Heavy and Easy corruptions •Easy corruptions • Users data are corrupted (partially) • User’s indices corrupted •Heavy corruptions • System data are damaged (We can’t read users data!) Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 9
- 10. Examples ● Cannot find TIP page – Lost TIP pages – Wrong transaction number in record header ● What we can do – Recreate TIP – Delete records Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 10
- 11. Wrong record length ● Record length does not correspond to declared size – Must be deleted Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 11
- 12. Attempted to read more segments.. ● BLOB corruption — loss of BLOB parts ● What we can do? – Export as is – Delete corrupted BLOB Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 12
- 13. Cannot find record fragment ● Fragment of record disappeared – Usually on another data page ● We can only delete remained part Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 13
- 14. Nbackup delta won't merge ● Database delta won't merge ● What we can do – Delete delta (it hurts!) – Manual merge with special tools – Export data Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 14
- 15. Fixing Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 15
- 16. Standard means •Stop Firebird server. •Make a copy of Firebird database. •Start Firebird server and run the following commands: gfix.exe -v -full gfix.exe -mend –ig gbak -b –g -v •If backup completed successfully, restore database: gbak -c -v -user SYSDBA -pass masterkey path_to_backup path_to_database Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 16
- 17. Not very well known, but still standard means 1.Run them all, even if gfix shows errors. 2.Always use switch –ig for gbak to ignore checksum errors 3.Always use switch –g for gbak to suppress garbage collection (and to workaround index errors) 4.Use –v switch to have detailed output 5. Set database to read_only with gfix -mode read_only Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 17
- 18. Restore errors •After fixing corruptions it's a often to see "Cannot commit index" error at restore step. •In Firebird 2.0 and later this comes as a warning and database will be not brought on-line How to workaround ● IBDataPump – Bug with circular links ● FirstAID Extractor Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 18
- 19. Effectiveness Gbak+Gfix can recover almost all easy corruptions What they cannot fix: ● Heavy corruptions with a lot of losses ● System data corruptions Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 19
- 20. IBSurgeon Tools Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 20
- 21. IBSurgeon Tools for Recovery and data protection ● FirstAID – Direct – Extractor ● FBDataGuard – Protection – Backups Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 21
- 22. IBSurgeon FirstAID: Direct ● Scan internal structure and finds inconsistencies ● Replace/restore lost system pages where it is possible ● Delete wrong pages and dead records ● Fast! ● Effective for user's data corruptions Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 22
- 23. IBSurgeon FirstAID: Extractor ● Reads metadata from database and read records bypassing server – Free preview of records is available ● Export all good records to the new database ● Resolve dependencies – Foreign Keys, Triggers, UDFs ● Speed is 1Gb/hour ● Very effective Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 23
- 24. External metadata ● Extractor can borrow metadata from good healthy database with the same structure and export data from corrupted one, even if all system data lost ● Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 24
- 25. Metadata repository Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 25
- 26. Increased recovery rate ● Metadata repository increase recovery rate up to 99% ● FBDataGuard is a tool to create metadata repository Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 26
- 27. Better prevent when fix! ● FBDataGuard vs FirstAID? ● Easy licensing options ● Special offer for attendees of Firebird Conference 2014 Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 27
- 28. Thank you! ● Www.ib-aid.com ● Www.ibsurgeon.com ● support@ib-aid.com Firebird Conference 2014 (c) IBSurgeon, 2014 28