Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!uwvax!oddjob!ncar!noao!mcdsun!fishpond!fnf
From: fnf@fishpond.UUCP (Fred Fish)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Backup Programs
Message-ID: <34@fishpond.UUCP>
Date: 23 May 88 17:53:43 GMT
References: <2890@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: fnf@fishpond.UUCP (Fred Fish)
Organization: occasionally
Lines: 35

In article <2890@polya.Stanford.EDU> rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) writes:
>I've just run the gamet of backup programs, and lack one crucial
>feature.  I want to be able to backup my hard disk to multiple
>volumes!  I.e., I want to be able to say
>
>	bru -cv -f df0:,df1:,df2:,df3:
>
>and then it will backup to floppies, cycling through the four
>floppies in order.  This way, I don't need to feed floppies as
>often, and the program never has to wait for me.

Relief is in sight!  This is one of the features on my "TODO" list,
since it has also been a common request from Unix customers with
multiple tape drives.  Now that file compression is complete and working,
and support for SCSI tape drives is in progress, the next area that
I will be tackling is some sort of IPC mechanism (support for AREXX ??),
which should include some sort of script language, of which one of
the commands will set up a list of devices to cycle through when a
new device is required for the next volume.

Actually, this may already work on the Amiga through a quirk of the
console system.  On Unix, bru contains explicit code to flush the
input interaction stream queue before issuing a prompt for the
next volume and accepting any input.  This is to prevent problems
with people leaning on your keyboard while you are in the midst of
a multivolume backup.  Under AmigaDOS, this code is not enabled
(anyone know the correct ioctl()? :-), so you can probably just
type ahead; df1:<return> df2:<return>, etc.  Note I haven't tried
this though...

-Fred

-- 
# Fred Fish    hao!noao!mcdsun!fishpond!fnf     (602) 921-1113
# Ye Olde Fishpond, 1346 West 10th Place, Tempe, AZ 85281  USA