Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: backup through the fs
Message-ID: <1989Apr25.184550.3131@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <8904181440.AA11202@adt.uucp>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 89 18:45:50 GMT

In article <8904181440.AA11202@adt.uucp> madd@adt.UUCP (jim frost) writes:
>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.

Don't confuse the program with the format.  It is not hard to write a
program that scavenges files from a tar tape.  In fact, guess how we
just did a restore off backups on our 4D/60T.  Surprise surprise, SGI
tar does *not* know how to restore off a multi-tape backup, although it's
perfectly happy to create them...  We'd have been Up S**t Creek if we
didn't have the scavenging programs; SGI basically just said "uh, yeah,
that's a problem" when we asked.
-- 
Mars in 1980s:  USSR, 2 tries, |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
2 failures; USA, 0 tries.      | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu