Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uwmcsd1!marque!carroll1!erickson
From: erickson@carroll1.UUCP (Dave Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: backup with compressed cpio files ?
Message-ID: <229@carroll1.UUCP>
Date: 21 Feb 89 03:17:41 GMT
References: <9100001@netmuc> <872@deimos.cis.ksu.edu> <9667@smoke.BRL.MIL> <64@estinc.UUCP>
Reply-To: erickson@carroll1.UUCP (Dave Erickson)
Organization: Carroll College-Waukesha, WI
Lines: 33

In article <64@estinc.UUCP> fnf@estinc.UUCP (Fred Fish) writes:
>
>With compress, one read error and you're SOL as far as recovering the rest
>of the data.  Of course, vanilla cpio is so braindead that you're SOL
>anyway, so you might as well go ahead and compress it...  :-)
>-- 

	I agree.  One medium error and you're kicked out of the program.  This
happens rather mercilessly whether you are on the first file of the first tape
or on the third tape - 3 hours through the cpio program!!  Then of course you
have to restart.  We back up our 3B2 every week with the command:

#cd /
#find * -print|cpio -ocvO /dev/rSA/qtape1

This takes several hours and 4 tapes minimum...assuming there are no medium errors, or
pretty much any other kind. 

We are working on more efficient algorithms such as breaking the cpio at every
tape change and starting a new one with whatever is left to save, but nothing
is really perfected yet.

If anyone of you 3B2ers out there have any suggestions (besides 'sell'), I'd
love to hear from you.

Please e-mail your backup suggestions to :
erickson@carroll1.UUCP

I'll post anything useful

thanx.

Dave