Backup and Recovery in an Oracle Environment

This section explains how to move Blackboard Learn and Content Collection files to another server.

Content Collection files are available only if your school licenses content management.

This information applies to all systems using a UNIX or Linux Operating System with an Oracle® database. To learn more, see the Supported Technologies article corresponding to your release.

There are several methods and solutions for Administrators interested in establishing regularly scheduled backups (and associated restore procedures) of Oracle databases. Regularly scheduled maintenance is outside the scope of this document. To learn more, see the documentation supplied by Oracle.

Working with large databases

When working with a large database, use the nohup utility for the export and import procedures. This will enable the processes to continue running even if the connection is lost. If the shell exits, the nohup utility will ignore the SIGHUP (signal hangup) thereby keeping the child processes from being terminated. The appropriate syntax is as follows:

/usr/bin/nohup command [argument]

Processes run by /usr/bin/nohup are immune to SIGHUP and SIGQUIT (signal quit). The nohup utility does not ignore SIGTERM (terminate signal). To locate nohup on the system, issue the command:

which nohup

In addition to using the nohup utility, the process may also be turned into a background process by appending an "&" to the end of the string. Making a process a background process allows for the process to complete while also leaving the terminal available for additional use. The appropriate syntax is as follows:

/usr/bin/nohup command [argument] &