UNIX incompatibility example

Three users working on a Solaris system without Data Protector installed, each using a different character set, create files on the same filesystem outside the ASCII character range. If the users then use the ls command to display the files they created as well as those created by the other users, the following happens:

•each user views their own file names correctly

•each user views the file names of the other users as corrupted. The corrupted file names may even look different on the different systems.

The corrupted file names were created using a different code set than the one used to perform the ls command. They do not have a "tag" indicating the code set which was used for their creation. This happens on systems using native filesystem viewers, for example,ls in the terminal window.

File name handling during backup

Data Protector reads file names using the Disk Agent (running on the respective client to be backed up) and saves an original copy to a medium. The file names are also converted to an “internal” code set and logged to the IDB, if the log filename option is selected for the backup.

Browsing file names

The Data Protector GUI can be used to select the files for restore. This is done by viewing the file names in the IDB on the system where the GUI is running. Data Protector offers multiple encodings to view all file names that appear in its GUI. When a specific character encoding is selected, Data Protector uses it to display characters in filenames.

To correctly display filenames, select the same character encoding that was in effect on the system, on which the files were created. Otherwise, file names appear corrupted in the Data Protector GUI.

The correct file names can be restored to the same platform that backup was made on.

For a list of configurations indicating the file name browsing restrictions, see the online Help index: “internationalization”.

File name handling during restore

Files are typically restored to the same platform as was used for backup. The process is as follows:

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Further information