🚀 go-pugleaf

Some month ago, there was a request in this News Group regarding 
suggestions for GNU software.  My suggestion starts from a problem I 
have at work.  I take care of four elderly, Sun Workstations which are a 
little decrepit, with somewhat flakey disk and tape drives.  

I, with the rest of my group, design lenses for a living, a numerically 
intensive task, particularly on such old machines.  Since it takes a 
great deal of hard work to generate our data, I am very concerned about 
the integrity of our backups.  Unfortunately my boss, who approves the 
capital, is not.  

In probing the issue of backup integrity, I found that none of the 
common Unix backup tools stores the data in a form that allows much 
chance of recovery from write errors or tape imperfections.  Even on 
good, new equipment, this situation is not very satisfactory. On my 
setup, it is a real worry.

To solve this problem, the Unix world needs an error-correcting, and 
preferably, multi-volume version of dd.  Unix already has excellent 
archive programs, and compression utilities, and there is no point in 
re-inventing the wheel.  

A utility, however, that would:-

*       read data from its standard input

*       apply an error-correcting code

*       interleave the data to minimize the risk from local tape flaws

*       block the data for tape output

*       reverse the above process

would fill a significant gap in the common Unix tools.  As well as 
providing for reliable tape backup, such a utility would allow Unix 
users to store almost any data reliably on tape.  

So, if there is a Unix wizard out there looking for a challenge...


Clinton (clinton.evans@canrem.com)
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 * MR/2 2.09A #144 * If you can't make it good, make it big.