Re: FTP During System Backup

Hi Janell,

Do you end the FTP server during your backups? (Or take the system down to a restricted state -- which essentially ends the FTP server?)

If so, there should be an error message when they try to connect. You can't send files with FTP if the server isn't running. (Unless you have some sort of a failsafe proxy in place, I guess.)

If not, then the files should be there when the backup is complete.

Perhaps this is a bug in you software that checks for the files? Maybe it first processes all the files in the directory, then deletes all of the files in the directory? That could easily result in a file being deleted without being processed. (For example, if the file was uploaded in between the initial "processing", and the "deleting")

Or perhaps it's a bug somewhere else? (The sender not checking errors properly?)

It's a mystery... someone needs to be a sleuth. Have fun :)


On 12/28/2010 9:00 AM, janell.haskins@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

We have a B2C website that sends orders via FTP from the web hosting
company to the IFS of our iSeries every couple of hours.

We switched to a new hosting company about 6 weeks ago and since then
there have been a couple times when we didn't receive orders, even
though the hosting company's logs say that they've been sent with no
errors. According to the timestamps on the orders before and after the
missing ones these orders would have been transmitted during a system
back (go save, option 21) on our iSeries.

Is it possible that the hosting company would be able to FTP in and
"put" files in the IFS during the backup? If so, why wouldn't the files
be there after the backup was complete? If this isn't possible, why
aren't they getting some sort of error message?