Logging changes from circular to archive after boot 1

[aixmurderer]

Hi all

Got DB2 7.2 on AIX 5.1, config for a DB instance was set to circular logging.
Log retain for recovery enabled (LOGRETAIN) = OFF
User exit for logging enabled (USEREXIT) = OFF

A while ago the LOGRETAIN entry changed to CAPTURE and started to keep log files eventually filling up the FS.

Changed the value back to OFF, but after a system reboot this value has changed back to CAPTURE.

What would do this? Could an applcation do it, or does it require manual intervention? Would replication settings have anything to do with it?

Any advice appreciated. I'm not a DB2 expert, but somehow ended up with doing the DBA work as well.

IBM Certified Confused - MQSeries
IBM Certified Flabbergasted - AIX 5 pSeries System Administration
MS Certified Windblows Rebooter

 

[scotdb]

Remember that changes to DBM CFG parameters don't become effective until the DB2 instance is stopped and started (and that a reboot obviously does this). So in all probability the change is happening sometime prior to the reboot.
Because the value has changed to CAPTURE rather than RECOVERY I suspect that someone is creating tables with the (not default) DATA CAPTURE CHANGES option. This option captures extra info into the DB2 logs for use in replication. If this is specified then the logging mode has to be turned to CAPTURE to allow this to happen. Perhaps you are using a tool which wants to set this on as a default option (things like QuestCentral and DBArtisan sometimes do this).
In general for a production server you would want retained logs otherwise your only recovery option is to the last full offline backup. Normally you'd want to be able to roll forward to the point of failure.