🚀 go-pugleaf

leisi@gmx.ch (Matthias Leisi) writes:

> Marc SCHAEFER wrote in ch.comp.os.linux:
> 
> >> Dann wie weiter ? Wie bekomme ich ein Device f�r dieses Band ?
> >[Good explanation snipped]

Good but maybe a bit oversized for the original poster's demands...

> Regarding tape technologies: I would opt for DAT drives. Even 
> if speed is not your major concern, there are times when you
> are glad to have a fast tape (when it comes to restore...). 

I'm not sure about DATs. Last time i saw someone with a DAT 
backup he had a wild expression in his eyes, asking me with
a hoarse voice 'Do YOU know a machine that can read this?'.
I'd use tapes for really big partitions or frequent backups only.
For average sized data my group at the ETH used CDROMs, and
i personally backup my 2GB linux partition on a 640 MB MO disk.
That ensures that the stuff can be read even if the backup
drive breaks. But your mileage may vary.

Re software: You want the restore program to have an as primitive
as possible user interface, Because usually you have a clean
machine or drive when you restore and don't want to install
lesstif first. For this purpose something like
find / -depth | cpio -mupd /dev/sda1 is a good idea,
because restoring is as easy. If you want slightly mre comfort,
you may choose kbackup, and if that is not big/smart/strong
enough, go with bru or one of the other common packages.

ObRelatedIssue: What's the best way to setup/backup a linux
system that can be endoscopically restored? I mean, in case
the harddisk has to be replaced, or something like that, 
i currently have to do a small linux installation, install
kbackup on it, and then do the restore. Like this there is no 
100% guarantee that the system will look exactly like the time
the backup was made (the new installation may have added files).
I have a laptop with the MO drive on a SCSIcard. PCMCIA support
is not part of the kernel and hard to get running without an
ok setup system (i have SuSE 6.1 and there is a possibility to 
do this, but maybe there are better ways). What about a 'shadow'
boot partition that can be restored from floppy and contains '/'
of the actual installation as maybe '/real_inst'? Then the shadow
linux would be installed from floppy, and then do a 
cd /real_inst; tar xvfz /mnt/backup.tar.gz on a backup
that was created after booting the shadow and saying
cd /real_inst; tar cvfz  /mnt/backup.tar.gz .
Sounds complicated and i'm probably way too lazy to actually
implement it, but since you seem to be pros, i'd like to
ask for an opinion here.


-- 
Ernst-Udo Wallenborn
Laboratorium fuer Physikalische Chemie
ETH Zuerich