1. 1 Copy and paste your photo into your opening and closing slide Aleph Best Practices for System Maintenance Jerry Specht April 2014 Senior Support Analyst jerry.specht@exlibrisgroup.com

2. 22 Copyright Statement All of the information and material inclusive of text, images, logos, product names is either the property of, or used with permission by Ex Libris Ltd. The information may not be distributed, modified, displayed, reproduced – in whole or in part – without the prior written permission of Ex Libris Ltd. TRADEMARKS Ex Libris, the Ex Libris logo, Aleph, Alma, SFX, SFXIT, MetaLib, DigiTool, Verde, Primo, Voyager, MetaSearch, MetaIndex and other Ex Libris products and services referenced herein are trademarks of Ex Libris, and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other product names, company names, marks and logos referenced may be trademarks of their respective owners. DISCLAIMER The information contained in this document is compiled from various sources and provided on an "AS IS" basis for general information purposes only without any representations, conditions or warranties whether express or implied, including any implied warranties of satisfactory quality, completeness, accuracy or fitness for a particular purpose. Ex Libris, its subsidiaries and related corporations ("Ex Libris Group") disclaim any and all liability for all use of this information, including losses, damages, claims or expenses any person may incur as a result of the use of this information, even if advised of the possibility of such loss or damage. © Ex Libris Ltd., 2014

3. 33 Agenda **Oracle Tables** 1.Ensure sufficient database space 2.Make sure Archiving is turned on 3.From Preventive Maintenance doc: … 4.Check the Oracle alert log weekly. **NON-Oracle Files** 1a. How to locate excessively large files 1b. How to locate largest directories 2. Deletion with util x & aleph_startup 3. Do “df –h” weekly **Backups** (from Preventive Maintenance doc.) ----- Documents on Technical Seminar CD ----- Recap

4. 44 **Oracle Space**

5. 55 1. Ensure sufficient database space Tablespace Free Space (util o/14/1, 10%?: tables which grow rapidly, more; others, less) vir01 tables which grow large rapidly: z05 and z110 (but they're deleted by clear_vir01); -- CHECK #1: clear_vir01 failure is cause of surprising # of serious problems; “Resource busy and acquire with NOWAIT specified” message

6. 66 Articles on z05/z110 problems Articles : 000012940 (KB 5297), 000007337 (KB 5711), and 000015729 (KB 8192-9608); Solution: Article 000001845 (KB 5737) (Stop www_server and pc_server before running clear_vir01).

7. 77 Other large tables which grow rapidly: z69 {OPAC Events (for OPAC Statistics)}; z71 (Order and Subscription Log); z309 (Circ log) (cir-78 cleans; Art. 000021510) z980 (z98 supplement table, can grow to 50% of z98; reinitialized by p_manage_01; see Article 000004719 (KB 8192-2168) z00t (Document tracking -- new with version 20, *optional*, see Article 000019856 (KB 16384-42497) z307 (Patron logger -- new with version 21, p_cir_27 produces report of log; see Article 000004999 (KB 16384-45633)

8. 88 Util x/13 Util x/13 v22 rep_change 2020 in Minor release 22.1 (Feb. 2015?) Following tables can be cleaned up: Z35, Z69, Z30H, Z36H, Z37H, Z38H. z35 {Circ Events (for Circ Statistics)}; z30h (Item history table) (see Article 000007431 (KB 5845): "Unnecessary z30h history records"); z36h (Loan history table)

9. 99 util a/12-16; util o/14/1 Util a/12: drop z50 (see Article 000020602) Util a/13: drop z34 (see Article 000004879) Util a/14: drop z07 (Don’t use this!) Util a/16: drop z35 (only in xxx01!) CHECK #2: Check the tablespaces weekly (with util o/14/1) to make sure that they have sufficient space. Monitor with Nagios? -- New in 22: (rep_ver 19043) “Util O Utilities Enhanced to Take into Account Auto Extensible Data Files When Calculating Free Table Space “

10. 10 2. Turn on Archiving All Aleph systems should have Archiving turned on (with the exception of when large indexing jobs are being run). CHECK #3: do util o/7/3 to make sure that Archiving is turned on. [Where you see the archive logs …]

11. 11 3. From Preventive Maintenance doc: "For Aleph 20, Ex Libris offers a backup package. Oracle – backups are now done with RMAN, an Oracle utility. The new Ex Libris Backup Package is intended for installations that do not have other backup methods in place for Aleph." Sections 5 and 6 of the doc have details on backup types and procedures. The Preventive Maintenance doc is included on the Tech Seminar CD.

12. 12 4. Check the Oracle alert log weekly. Article 000010582 describes the location of the log and permission issues. Section 8 of the Preventive Maintenance doc describes "Review Oracle Alert Log" in detail.

13. 13 **NON-Oracle Space** 1.Commands to locate large files 1a. How to locate excessively large files 1b. How to locate largest directories 2. Routine deletion of files with util x and aleph_startup Article 000011002 (KB 16384-27361) has commands to locate (1a) excessively large files and/or (1b) directories with an excessive number of smaller files.

14. 14 1a. How to locate excessively large files Use of du -sh (or “du –sm” or “du –sk”) The following command can be used to locate files over 1,000,000 blocks (400 meg) in a particular filesystem. For instance, if the filesystem which has filled up is /exlibris, then you would do this: > cd /exlibris > find. -size +1000000 -print

15. 15 1b. How to locate largest directories Command to locate the largest directories in a filesystem, in ascending order (the largest last): > cd /exlibris > du -hs./* | sort -n When you find excessively large directories/files, you should consider what process created these files and what can be done to prevent it. Note:./oradata/alephx/arch/ files should be handled only by your Oracle DBA.

16. 16 2. Deletion with util x & a leph_startup [From Article 000018663 (KB 16384-25697):] Do util x 1, 2, 9, 12, and 13 only. Save the most recent month of $data_print. The most recent week of others. Do not do util x/3, 6, 7, 8, or 10 on a regular basis. Not necessary. [Compare 20, 21, 22.] See the util x section of the "ALEPH UTIL Menus" doc in the /22 folder on the Doc Portal. As noted in section 1, above, util x/13 updates Oracle tables z30h, z35, z36h, z37h, and z69. Your $alephe_root/aleph_startup script already does cleanup of $TMPDIR and $LOGDIR:

17. 17 (Continued) #******************************************* # Cleanup TMPDIR/LOGDIR #******************************************* if (! $?KEEP_LOGDIR) then setenv KEEP_LOGDIR 7 # default for keeping logs is 7 days endif if (! $?KEEP_TMPDIR) then setenv KEEP_TMPDIR 2 # default for keeping tmp is 2 days endif echo "Cleaning temporary files more that $KEEP_TMPDIR days old..." echo " “ So doing util x/4 and /5 manually is unnecessary. The Doc Portal (How_to_from_Support directory) document "How to add UTIL X to the job list" describes how to add the util x functions to the job_list.

18. 18 CHECK #4 CHECK #4: Do command “ df –h” weekly to monitor the space in each filesystem -- especially /exlibris. If you are using Nagios or a similar monitor, this should not be necessary.

19. 19 CHECK #5 CHECK #5: clear_vir01 Check the $alephe_scratch/ clear_vir01 logs! Though failure of clear_vir01 is the most common cause of serious problems in searching, it should be run nightly or, at a minimum, weekly. But check the logs to make sure that it is running correctly. Is the log a different size than usual? Does it contain Oracle errors (do “grep ERROR *vir01*”)

20. 20 Backup Backup section of Preventive Maintenance doc Testing Restore from backup on Test server

21. 21 Documents on Technical Seminar CD I have included the following on the Technical Seminar CD: this PowerPoint; the Preventive Maintenance and Recovery Policy document (from the: > Ex Libris Documentation Center > Aleph > Technical Documentation > Version 20.x > System Administration folder); not included in v21 or v22 folders. Aleph 22 System Administration Guide Article 000018663 ( KB 16384-25697 )("Preventive maintenance questions") is relevant.

22. 22 Recap Recap … and Thank you! Jerry.specht@exlibrisgroup.com