Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix.sco Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!torsqnt!geac!gjetor!adeboer From: adeboer@gjetor.geac.COM (Anthony DeBoer) Subject: Re: Best way to backup SCO Xenix/UNIX Message-ID: <1991Apr8.191307.29359@gjetor.geac.COM> Keywords: backup unix xenix sco Organization: Geac J&E Systems Ltd. References: <1991Apr3.121959.627@cynic.wimsey.bc.ca> <5664@vela.acs.oakland.edu> <1991Apr7.044627.5298@ucselx.sdsu.edu> Date: Mon, 8 Apr 91 19:13:07 GMT In article <1991Apr7.044627.5298@ucselx.sdsu.edu> aty@ucselx.sdsu.edu (young a t) writes: >Got to be careful with this. We recently had the disk controller crash >on our 3B2 system, which had been backed up with cpio as you describe. >The disks we lost had all the users' home directories. So we said, >OK, we'll just restore those guys on the SUN workstation from the >backup tapes, right? Wrong. The SUN version of cpio can't read >multi-volume backups; we only saved the guys who were on the first >tape. There are probably other Berkeley-derived systems whose cpio >can only read one tape. BEWARE! From a lot of experiences in our shop restoring backups on machines other than the one that made them, or of needing one file from the fifth tape of a set, my conclusion is that multi-tape backups are evil. What I've started using is a small program that acts something like the C-News batcher, generating backup lists each containing no more than a certain number of megs worth of data, and then backing up each list to a single tape. That way I can restore all or part of any individual tape independently, I'm not completely dead in the water if tape two dies, and I don't have to worry about differing end-of-tape continuation implementations. Any other views on this area? -- Anthony DeBoer NAUI#Z8800 | adeboer@gjetor.geac.com | Programmer (n): One who Geac J&E Systems Ltd. | uunet!geac!gjetor!adeboer | makes the lies the Toronto, Ontario, Canada | #include | salesman told come true.