Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!sdcsvax!ucsd!rutgers!mailrus!ulowell!ross@sword.ulowell.edu
From: ross@sword.ulowell.edu (Ross Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: Why I do not like SR10
Message-ID: <10873@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 23 Dec 88 17:40:14 GMT
References: <15995@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Sender: news@swan.ulowell.edu
Lines: 43

From article <15995@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>, by sahayman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Steve Hayman):
> What kind of software engineering is this?  I was doing a "wbak" as
> part of our normal backup procedure.  At the start of the fourth tape,
> after wbak prompted me to mount another tape, my fingers got a little
> ahead of my brain and I typed "go" a split second before the tape came online.

> wbak's response?  "Unexpected error - tape offline"

> OK fine.  Now any sane backup tool would surely say "Do you want
> to retry the open?" and give you another chance.  It's not
> as if "tape offline" is some sort of bizarre totally unexpected
> error condition.

Reasonable.

> But what does wbak do when it finds the tape offline?  It QUITS!
> I have to start all over again! Three hours of work down the drain!
> Thank you Apollo!  Merry Christmas to you too!
Bah, Humbug should have been added.

> Grrr.
> 
> Give me "dump(8)" or give me death.


dump(8) works on file systems.  The apollo domain file system is
different from regular unix.  Because of these differences it is
able to handle very large numbers of workstations sharing all file
systems to look like one big file system.  Therefore, what is
the definition of dump in this enviroment?  Should it attempt to
backup up the whole network?   Or just the local disk?  Or maybe
even just a tree.  
	I think the solution is an overall better backup/archival 
system than wbak, but not dump.  Something with some of the nice
concepts of dump and restore would be useful, but I for one like
to see operating systems advance, and not stay stagnent on Unix
and C.  I mean, I kinda liked NOS on the old CDC's, because it
did exactly what you told it to do and did not try to outsmart itself.
But, I wouldn't ask everyone to use it.  
	We must push forward and not become mired in "current"
ideas and software.

								Ross