Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!pyrnj!dasys1!rpaul
From: rpaul@dasys1.UUCP (Rod Paul)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: backup through the fs
Message-ID: <9405@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: 22 Apr 89 06:24:08 GMT
References: <8904181440.AA11202@adt.uucp>
Reply-To: rpaul@dasys1.UUCP (Rod Paul)
Organization: Datamerica Systems, NYC
Lines: 31

>>Me?--I use tar & cpio.
>>
>>Vernon Schryver
>>Silicon Graphics
>>vjs@sgi.com
>
>Tar isn't too useful when you're backing up more than a few hundred
>megabytes (actually even a hundred).  It's slow and very unreliable.
>Given Murphy's Law and the nature of tape drives, the one backup you
>really need will be corrupted.  A good backup/restore program would be
>able to get a lot of information off the tape anyway; tar would barf
>and you'd end up bit-fiddling to get the file.  Blech.
>

How about "bru"? Anybody else out ther using it? I've had no problems
at all, and it's great over the net. It also uses the fastest damn
copression inplementation (option) I've seen yet. To specify media size
use the -s option, when "bru" figures it needs another tape it stops
and asks for one. You can also write a label in the header field.

I ended up writing a shell as a general front end at our facility (as
"bru" has so many flags), I used some other shell from the SGI release
as a template. I don't remember what it was now, just check out every
damn program that does backups.

One thing I wonder though, how portable is a file backed up with "bru"?

-- 
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