Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!lccinc!bent From: bent@lccinc.UUCP (Ben Taylor) Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386 Subject: Re: how do you make backups on an Exabyte? Keywords: backup, Exabyte, SCOV3.2.2 Message-ID: <314@lccinc.UUCP> Date: 16 Jan 91 02:48:47 GMT References: <8756@star.cs.vu.nl> Organization: Lunayach Communications Consultants, Inc. Lines: 69 rvdp@cs.vu.nl (Ronald van der Pol) writes: >I'm using SCO UNIX 3.2.2 I'm using SCO Xenix 2.3.2, but the concepts are basically the same. >I want to do the following: >- dumping on a 2.3 GB Exabyte tapedrive >- both full and incremental dumps >- many dumps on one tape >- should be done by cron every night in multiuser mode >- easy restoring >- should work with emergency boot floppy and root filesystem I've been slowly working on these items, including network backups. I currently use tar to get the files off, but I need to start using CPIO so that I can restore everything from tape. I know that xenix needs the xnx155 upgrade to make CPIO backups that can be restored from. By the way, for those emergency boot/root floppies, any one try and strip the kernel and load in a minimal tcp to reload from across a network. I'd be interested in know whats required. >Problems with the standard SCO utilities: >- find doesn't have an option to skip mounted filesystems I wasn't aware that find could read an unmounted file system, if I read what you're saying here correctly. I'm not a guru. >- backup(8) is only interactive (does it skip mounted filesystems??) Never used it. >- no facility for multi dumps >My solution so far: >- I use GNU find. It has an -xdev option for skipping mouted filesystems >- find . -depth -print | cpio -ocvB > /dev/nrStp0 ?? >- after/before every dump a "echo 'filesystem dumplevel date' > /dev/nrStp0" ?? >- restoring by "tape rfm" (I have to carefully count the dumps :-( :-( :-( I prefer to put a file named 'begin/system-name' touched when the backup is being performed, and put any relevant info in this file. Then do a tape wfm, do the backup, another tape wfm, then a trailer which has a file named 'end/system-name' touched after the backup is finished. Then one last tape wfm. I find it a heck of a lot easier to manage the information we have on tapes. (Yes, I know a tape wfm wastes 2 Mb, I have 2339 Mb on the cartridge and never come close to filing one up). Restoring is pretty boring, as I haven't had a chance to write the scripts to parse a tape for a particular system. >Did you find a good easy useble solutions for making backups in SCO UNIX? Its fairly easy to maintain, however its not something I can release cause it pretty hack scripts right now and I'm short on time. >-- > Ronald van der Pol Hope this helps. Ben Taylor Systems Administrator LCC Incorporated uunet!lccinc!bent "My employer does not pay me for my opinion, neither should you."