Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!chinacat!chip From: chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal) Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin Subject: Re: Forcing good backup procedures Message-ID: <1694@chinacat.Unicom.COM> Date: 11 Nov 90 19:53:16 GMT References: <867@zeusa.UUCP> Organization: Unicom Systems Development, Austin, TX Lines: 41 In article <867@zeusa.UUCP> hendrik@zeusa.UUCP (Hendrik Vermooten) writes: >A customer of mine has about 20 XENIX sites, with *low* level operators. >Making backups is a problem [...] What I'm looking for is some >program/script/anything that will check if the correctly labled tape [...] You've got a bigger problem than getting backups made - you need to fix an attitude problem. I would recommend a letter to the manager of the facility. I do not suggest that this letter beat them up over bad practices, but rather suggest a positive course of action and clearly explain the benefits to be obtained. If possible, these benefits should be in terms of cold, hard cash. For example, I've got an analogous situation with one client. They were very begrudging over my recommendation to start using passwords. They still don't have a root password. Just two weeks ago, they went out and bought another terminal because the (theoretical) system administrator wanted "to do data entry while generating reports." This is on a SCO XENIX system, which has multiscreen capability (i.e. the equivalent 12 tty's on the console). She didn't know about that. Just this week, they ran out of disk space because nobody watches the df's. The price they've paid this last month on unnecessary equipment and lost productivity would more than pay for two people to attend a XENIX training class. If I can convince them to send just one person, they win. Maybe training classes aren't a possibility for you. In this case, check out other alternatives. Check out the instructional videotapes and other programs. Your challenge is to motivate (at least) one person at this site to get responsible for these machines. You aren't going to cram anything down their throats they don't want - work on making them want it. I strongly advise you to address the attitude problem. A tape labelling program would indeed be a handy tool, but that's going after the symptoms. Unless you fix the real problem, clients like this can become lots of headache and little reward. -- Chip Rosenthal Unicom Systems Development, 512-482-8260 Our motto is: We never say, "But it works with DOS."