Restoring Archived Versions — The unarchive Command

After you have archive"d some versions and reclaim"ed the disk space:

  • The versions" container files are no longer in the depot's data area.

  • Copies of the container files are no longer in the depot's archive_gateway/out area (since you"ve transferred them to off-line storage).

If you decide you need to restore some or all of the archived versions, you must first copy the container files from off-line storage back to the archive_gateway area. You must place the files under archive_gateway/in, at the same relative pathname as they were originally placed under archive_gateway/out. For example, if the archive command places a container file at:

.../storage/depots/gizmo/archive_gateway/out/data/25/07.sto

... you must restore the file from off-line storage to this pathname:

.../storage/depots/gizmo/archive_gateway/in/data/25/07.sto

After placing all the container files in the archive_gateway/in area, you can execute the unarchive command. This command has the same format as archive. That is, you specify the versions to be restored in exactly the same way as you originally archived them (with one exception — see below).

For example, to archive all non-active versions of GIF image files in stream gizmo_maint_4.3:

accurev archive -s gizmo_maint_4.3 *.gif

Later, you can restore all those versions:

accurev unarchive -s gizmo_maint_4.3 *.gif

Exception: you can use the -a option to unarchive all the versions currently in the archive_gateway/in area. In this case, the unarchive command syntax doesn"t mimic the archive command syntax exactly:

accurev unarchive -s gizmo_maint_4.3 -a

This set of restored versions might have been archived in a single step or in multiple steps.