🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <12237@well.UUCP> gors@well.UUCP (Gordon Stewart) wrote:
>
>Hello, I am trying to figure out how to do regular backups on 
>an IBM RT running AIX 2.2.1.

>I can't seem
>to give the backup command more than one volume to back up at once.

Time for a script!

>Nor does it appear to have a flag which allows incremental storage
>on my tape.  Is there any way of backing up several volumes to the
>same tape?

As far as I know, backup, like tar and cpio, doesn't know anything
about tape handling except what to do when it thinks it's run out of
media.  Choose the no-rewind tape device, and you'll be able to
put more than one archive on a tape.  On my system, that means
using /dev/rmt4 instead of /dev/rmt0.

>Does anyone out there have a script which controls the
>level of your back up by the current date.  

The easiest way to do this is to have the script accept the backup
level as an input parameter, and write a crontab entry to feed it
different numbers on different days.  Be sure to program the operator
to feed the tape drive different numbers of tapes, unless the intent is
to do full backups for different devices on different days.

Making sure that the tapes have accurate paper labels on them is an
important part of the process.  Backup can identify the partition,
level, and date from the file on tape, but it takes a long time to
retrieve this information if you don't know what's where when you
start.

	Chuck Karish		{decwrl,hpda}!mindcrf!karish
	(415) 493-7277		karish@forel.stanford.edu

In article <12237@well.UUCP> gors@well.UUCP (Gordon Stewart) writes:
>
>Hello, I am trying to figure out how to do regular backups on 
>an IBM RT running AIX 2.2.1.  I would like to use "backup" format
>since it appears to be much faster than tar, as well as having an
>incremental backup system built into the command.  I can't seem
>to give the backup command more than one volume to back up at once.

The backup command can back up files by name, in which case it can
cross file systems, or it can back up file systems, either as images
or by inode.  The incremental mode is a file system backup, by inode
as I recall.  If you wanted to do a global backup of changed files,
you'd have to make up a list of the files you wanted to back up, and
back them up by name.

>Nor does it appear to have a flag which allows incremental storage
>on my tape.  Is there any way of backing up several volumes to the
>same tape?

Yes, but only if you write all of the files before you reposition the
tape.  These tapes cannot be read or repositioned and then written to,
and you can't append to a file.  Now were you to run several backup
commands in a row, you could write several successive files to the
same tape.  But this is not a property of the backup command.  It is
controlled by the device name.  /dev/rmt0 rewinds after.  /dev/rmt4
rewinds neither on open or close.  /dev/rmt8 retensions before and
rewinds after.  /dev/rmt12 retensions before but does not rewind.

If you were backing up a bunch of file systems, to a single tape, you
might write the first file to /dev/rmt12, the intermediates to
/dev/rmt4, and the last one to /dev/rmt0.

>  Does anyone out there have a script which controls the
>level of your back up by the current date.  

I use a fancy tar driver, myself.
 
(.....)

-- 
Nick Simicich --- uunet!bywater!scifi!njs --- njs@ibm.com (Internet)

 I recently got GNU tar running on our Silicon Graphics machines
 (They run a SysV with BSD extensions).   I imagine I could get it going
 on the AIX RT's without too much trouble.   It supports the BSD "rmt"
 remote magtape interface, multiple volumes, full and incremental
 backups and restores and labels your tape.  Plus you can run it on
 practically any Unix machine, so you can read any backup on any
 machine.  Most non-BSD Unix implementations come with their own pet
 backup program that is totally incompatible with any other vendor's.
 SGI has "BRU", AIX has "backup", etc.

 When you have more than 50 diskfull machines to backup, you want to
 provide a common interface for operators, the ability to do remote
 backups and restores, and be able to use more than a single tape
 drive in case of hardware or network failure.

 -e

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Eric Pearce eap@bu-it.bu.edu
 Boston University Information Technology      
 111 Cummington Street                        
 Boston MA 02215                             
 617-353-2780 voice  617-353-6260 fax       

In article <12237@well.UUCP> gors@well.UUCP (Karin Meyer) wrote:

>Hello, I am trying to figure out how to do regular backups on 
>an IBM RT running AIX 2.2.1.  I would like to use "backup" format
>since it appears to be much faster than tar, as well as having an
>incremental backup system built into the command.

	Tar isn't too bad if you use the `-C' flag to send many blocks
	at once.  I always use `-C800' as a separate command-line
	parameter to tar.  This writes 400K to the tape at once, and
	the drive doesn't saw back and forth interminably writing 10K
	at a time (the default).

	Related question:  Have I missed something, or does AIX lack a
	generic utility to buffer input to the tape drive so it'll
	stream?  I'd like to do remote backups, but dd doesn't have the
	`-C' option.  It seems wasteful to me to support the same code
	in all tape utilities to do this.

>I can't seem
>to give the backup command more than one volume to back up at once.

	Backup is oriented towards backing up individual disk
	partitions, one per file.  It does that job well.  You can use
	a shell script to manage multiple partitions.

>Nor does it appear to have a flag which allows incremental storage
>on my tape.  Is there any way of backing up several volumes to the
>same tape?

	As with most UNIX tape utilities, you can back up several files
	to the same tape by choosing a no-rewind tape device (/dev/rmt4
	or /dev/rmt12).

	Chuck Karish		{decwrl,hpda}!mindcrf!karish
	(415) 493-9000		karish@forel.stanford.edu

Thanks for all your help, folks, but month-old replies to
a two-month-old query -- is someone out there hoarding news
and re-releasing it a month later?

And what's with all these articles with my name on them
with some fidonet nonesense in the signature?


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