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From: wcs@ho95e.ATT.COM (Bill.Stewart)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.sources.wanted
Subject: Re: Backup Utilities for Unix
Message-ID: <1422@ho95e.ATT.COM>
Date: Sat, 2-May-87 14:54:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: ho95e.1422
Posted: Sat May  2 14:54:59 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 3-May-87 08:08:48 EDT
References: <1308@ci-dandelion.UUCP> <4360@videovax.Tek.COM>
Reply-To: wcs@ho95e.UUCP (46133-Bill.Stewart,2G218,x0705,)
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs 46133, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 32
Keywords: system management backups dump restore
Xref: mnetor comp.unix.questions:2114 comp.sources.wanted:1068

In article <4360@videovax.Tek.COM> stever@videovax.Tek.COM (Steven E. Rice, P.E.) writes:
>In article <1308@ci-dandelion.UUCP>, David Watson (david@ci-dandelion.UUCP)
>> I'm starting to look for any software that provides a superset of the
>> Berkeley-style dump(8) and restore(8) utilities.  . . .
>that would be invaluable is the ability to back up the filesystem while
>the machine is loaded with users and running.  .....
>Particularly, I would like to find an incremental backup utility that
>would lurk in the background and periodically, at user-specified times
>(every hour, twice a day, whatever), back up files that have been
>changed since the last run.  

Incremental backups have their risks - they don't notice if files have
been *removed*, and can get confused if links change.  But they're easy
to use with live systems, and are normally adequate when used with
weekly or biweekly full backups.  On System V, you don't have dump/restor
- a common approach is to use volcopy (a souped-up dd which can handle
multiple tapes for a single disk slice) for image copies, and do
incrementals with find/cpio.  ("ff" is a much faster find which reads
the ilist instead of recursively searching directories, but the effect
is the same.)  Here's a crude backup program:

	mv /etc/backuptimes/$i /etc/backuptimes/old$i
	date >/etc/backuptimes/$i
	find $i -newer /etc/backuptimes/old$i -print | \
		cpio -ocBv >/dev/rmt/0hn 2>>/etc/backuptimes/log$i
		###         ^^tape-drive, no-rewind

If you don't like cpio, use xargs tar $TAROPTIONS.
We have spare disk space, so we dedicate a disk slice to incrementals,
and copy the slice to (the same) tape during the day.
-- 
# Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs 2G-202, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs