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From: debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.microport
Subject: Re: dump/restore
Keywords: cpio is not a real backup program
Message-ID: <8373@alice.UUCP>
Date: 31 Oct 88 16:06:54 GMT
References: <178@celerity.UUCP> <12433@steinmetz.ge.com> <77@usl-pc.usl.edu> <44433@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV>
Reply-To: debra@alice.UUCP ()
Organization: AT&T, Bell Labs
Lines: 20

In article <44433@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> rick@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams) writes:
>...
>A BACKUP program should be able to restore the disk to the state it
>was at the time of the backup. It should also offer incremental backups.

Right, and since there is no way to reset the create-time on a Unix system
(except by setting the date and resetting it but that's awful and can never
be used in a multiuser environment) there are NO backup programs that can
restore the disk to the state it was at the time of the backup since this
is simply not possible in Unix.
The only way to restore the disk is if you make a complete image, using
volcopy or dskcpy or whatever it is called (depending on the Unix version)
but those programs cannot offer incremental backups.

Paul.

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