Migrating Linux or HP-UX cell manager configuration to and from a Windows cell manager

All the backup definitions (including integration backups, schedules and so on) in Data Protector are plain text files so they are easy to edit and easy to move around.

On Windows, these are UTF-16 encoded, and on HP-UX and Linux they are ASCII encoded. If you copy a backup specification out of C:\ProgramData\Omniback\config\server\datalists on a Windows system to /etc/opt/omni/server/datalists on a Linux machine, the resulting file won't work properly. It will appear to have every second character have a null in it.

Fortunately, Linux boxes come with a utility called iconv. Here is how to use iconv to convert a datalist which was on a Windows system after it has been transferred to a Linux system.

iconv -f UTF-16 -t ASCII datalists/main-backup > datalists/main-backup.tempmv datalists/main-backup.temp datalists/main-backup

You can't just redirect output back to datalist/main-backup because that will overwrite the file before it is read.

If you need to do a whole directory:

find . -type f -exec sh -c 'iconv -f UTF-16 -t ASCII "{}" > "{}.temp" && mv "{}.temp" "{}"'  ';'

Of course, if you are migrating between cell managers, then you should pick up a copy of my latest book on migrating and obsoleting Data Protector cell managers.

Greg Baker is an independent consultant who happens to do a lot of work on HP DataProtector. He is the author of the only published books on HP Data Protector (http://www.ifost.org.au/press/#dp). He works with HP and HP partner companies to solve the hardest big-data problems (especially around backup). See more at IFOST's DataProtector pages at http://www.ifost.org.au/dataprotector