I have a customer that allowed their Lists file to get extremely large - over 4 gb. Now they have a GFE. When I try to dump the file, I get a runtime error from LHDUMP. I assume that I can't dump it because it is too large. Customer is trying to get the file restored but they are not sure they can get it restored. Any ideas on how I can correct the GFE or get Dump to work? The GFE is in the first group, so I cannot get to any of the Lists records and the customer wants some of them back.

Just of our curiousity, what kind of data is in the List file that is needed by your customer. Also a 4GB List file is hugh. The large files size may indicate that the List File itself is trash.

Any case fwiw, if the data in the List file isn't all that critical and can't be obtained elsewhere within the system, either clearout the List file or delete it and remake it. This will resolve your GFE problem in the List file and impediments to doing other useful work .

If there something really important in your List file, could you please share what that might be.

Ray

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Symmetry Info

Ray Chan ~ Symmetry Info

Back in my novice Pick programmer days I thought the LISTS file was the ideal place to put lookup table items like state codes etc. The main reason being the global nature of the LISTS file.

Later I came to realize that due to the dynamic nature of the file it was prone to GFEs, massive overflow situations and the amount of disk space it could consume on a multiuser system (particularly when command stacks etc are stored there).

Nowadays I consider it poor practice to use the LISTS file for anything that can't be trashed at a moments notice.

Anytime I run across an application written by another developer that uses the LISTS file I re-write it if possible (ie source code available).

The day the GFE occurred, I renamed the file to another name and created a new Lists file, so the customer has had no problem working. The data in the lists file that the customer would like to get back are lists created by an interface to a 3rd party vendor. The Lists records are saved with a month and day in the list. The end-user likes to be able to Get those old Lists and refer to them to see who was sent when etc. If necessary, I can recreate those lists by parsing out the data from the ASCII output files that are created by the interface.

I had the file restored - the last backup (they tell me) was from 03/30/2001. Butwhen the files were restored - the LK had a 3/30/01 date and the OV. had a June, 2001 date. I know that this cannot be correct. I will request another restore, and if they cannot restore it, they are out of Luck.

Thanks for your responses. CHS

I find it best if the restores are done to a different directory. Have them restore the the REVMEDIA.* files also. This is particularly useful if the file had been deleted and recreated in ARev for some reason since the backup copy was made (a new REVxxxxx).

Then do an OS copy of the REVxxxxx.* files to the 'live' directory.

In this manner you can also merge records in ARev from the 'old' file to the 'live' file. You have to fiddle with the volume names (as you cannot attach two different volumes with the same name) but that isn't much of a problem.

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