Is -wipe needed for regular maintenance?

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Thunderstone
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Joined: Wed Jun 07, 2000 6:20 pm

Is -wipe needed for regular maintenance?

Post by Thunderstone »



I'm trying to understand when I would need to
do a -wipe on my database now that I've done a
-rewalk a couple of times.

If I do weekly rewalks, does that process automatically
remove pages that were in the database but that no longer
exist? It appears that they remain and that I'd either
need to manually remove them with -s (impractical, of
course, on large scale) or to build a new database with
the -wipe switch.

If I do need to -wipe and completely empty the
database, would that interrupt availability of the service
while it does a fresh walk (can I expect that to take about
the same time as a rewalk, or longer?)?
To keep from interrupting service, should
I tell the walk with -wipe to build a new database and then
manually (or by script) copy it to replace my existing one
(as _db does for db in the default setup of a rewalk)?

Jim Cerny, Computing & Information Services, Univ.NH
jim.cerny@unh.edu



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Thunderstone
Site Admin
Posts: 2504
Joined: Wed Jun 07, 2000 6:20 pm

Is -wipe needed for regular maintenance?

Post by Thunderstone »



You never need to do -wipe if you're doing -rewalk.

-wipe lets you clean out an existing database to start anew.
There will be nothing to search after -wipe until you do a walk.

-rewalk walks to a brand new temporary database. Then when it
completes, it deletes the old database and makes the new one live.
So if pages no longer exist, they will not show up after a
successful -rewalk.



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