Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!ukc!slxsys!ibmpcug!robobar!ronald From: ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix.sco Subject: Re: Only one backup per tape? Really? Message-ID: <1990Dec13.165832.15863@robobar.co.uk> Date: 13 Dec 90 16:58:32 GMT References: Organization: Robobar Ltd., Perivale, Middx., ENGLAND. Lines: 34 nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu (aka NELSON@CLUTX.BITNET) writes: > I've got two filesystems to back up, and only one tape drive, and I'd > like to do unattended backups. Can I really only back up one > filesystem per tape? Well, of course I mean, will I be able to *restore* > from a tape with two backups on it? Depends on what kind of tape drive you have. If it's an Irwin drive or something like that which does not support a non-rewinding device, then NO. If it's a QIC-02/QIC-24 thingy sure, why not? Judicious use of the non-rewinding device (/dev/nrct0) and the "tape rfm" command will get you most places. Of course if there's an error *anywhere* on the tape, you can't skip past it, so if the first archive is busted, you can't get at the second, but that's a generic problem with cartridge tapes in general. BTW, if you're serious about doing unattended backups like that, I recommend getting the UFM (a.k.a. xnx155b) update from SCO because there's a much better cpio there -- the Xenix dumprestor isn't really much good, so I recommend cpio. Also, there's a better cartridge tape driver in UFM. What I don't understand about unattended backups is, how do you get all the users processes off the filesystem ? Or do you risk backing up a live filesystem? In that case *definitely* don't use the Xenix dumprestor -- it gets very confused real easily in a completely unrecoverable way from inconsistent backups (and from consistent ones as well, I think) -- ronald@robobar.co.uk +44 81 991 1142 (O) +44 71 229 7741 (H)