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From: det@herman.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Problems Backing Up Large Filesystems to Tape
Message-ID: <262@herman.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Mar-87 01:43:10 EST
Article-I.D.: herman.262
Posted: Wed Mar 25 01:43:10 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Mar-87 00:53:49 EST
References: <5440@brl-adm.ARPA>
Organization: Unisys Inc.-CSD  Eagan,MN
Lines: 28
Summary: LARGE backups w/volcopy and frec(1m)

In article <5440@brl-adm.ARPA>, chrisb@ALMSA-1.arpa (Christine Blumenkamp) writes:
> exit the tar or cpio command.  The volcopy command does prompt for additional
> tapes; however, we have problems restoring files with this command since we do
> not have an additional disk which is large enough for restoring our large
> filesystems.
> ......
> If this is normal, how do you backup large filesystems without writing your
> own routines to calculate how much of a filesystem you copy to each tape?

Christy,

I have never used this particular command (frec), but it appears in  the  admin
manual  and  it  looks  like it could be right up your alley.  You say that you
don't have enough *space* to restore your  whole  volcopy  on  disk,  and  even
though we do on our system, its a "just barely".  My principle complaint is the
amount of time spent copying back all those reels at 1600 bpi!!   Anyway,  frec
appears  to  just need an i-node number to recover a given file from a series a
volcopy tapes, thus cancelling any need to restore the whole volcopy  to  disk.
All  you  would  have  to  do is make sure that you get a map of file names and
their i-node numbers at volcopy time.

As I have said, I haven't ever used it but I would be interested in  knowing if
anybody  out  there  has  used  this utility and what the results were (like it
*does* stop searching tapes after finding the given file(s), and  it  *doesn't*
use  scratch  files  to  make a copy of the volcopy on disk does it?).  Anyway,
this looks like an option you can check into...

derek