3.2.2 Marking the Backup Status

When a backup is initially created with the BACKUP subcommand, it is always recorded with active status.

It is only by using the MANAGE subcommand at a particular point in time that active backups are evaluated to determine if their status should be changed to obsolete in accordance with the retention policy.

In addition, it is only when the MANAGE subcommand is invoked either with no options or with only the -s option (in order to specify the database server) that active backups are evaluated and also marked (that is, internally recorded by BART) as obsolete. See Section 3.4.7 for information about the MANAGE subcommand usage with its options.

Once a backup has been marked as obsolete, it cannot be changed back to active unless you perform the following steps:

•	Using the MANAGE subcommand, specify the -c option along with the backup identifier or name with the -i option. If you wish to keep this particular backup indefinitely, use -c keep, otherwise use -c nokeep.

•	If you use the -c nokeep option, the backup status is changed back to active. When the MANAGE subcommand is used the next time, the backup is re-evaluated to determine if its status needs to be changed back to obsolete based on the current retention policy in the BART configuration file.

Note: If the retention_policy parameter is set in a certain manner, you run the MANAGE subcommand to mark the backups according to that retention_policy setting, and then you change or disable the retention_policy parameter by commenting it out, the current, marked status of the backups are probably inconsistent with the current retention_policy setting.

If you wish to modify the backup status to be consistent with the current retention_policy setting, then perform the following:

•

If there are backups currently marked as obsolete that would no longer be considered obsolete under a new retention policy, run the MANAGE subcommand with the -c nokeep option for such backups to change the obsolete status to active status. You can also specify the -i all option, which would change all backups back to active status, including those currently marked as keep.

•	Run the MANAGE subcommand either with no options or with only the -s option to reset the marked status based on the new retention_policy setting in the BART configuration file.

Deletion of backups with the MANAGE -d option relies on the last occasion when the backups have been marked.

The current marking (the status) of the backups can be viewed with the SHOW-BACKUPS subcommand.