emigh@ncsugn.UUCP (05/01/87)
On one of the other newsgroups, I saw mention of one site where they ran the incremental backups at night under cron. As luck would have it, I lost the message, but the procedure was: 1) Under cron control, shut the computer down to single user in the wee hours. Have a lock file set up so that the shutdown program recognizes this as a backup shutdown. 2) As the machine comes up in single user mode, do the incremental backup, erase the lock file, then go back up to multiuser mode. This has certain appeal to users at our site, as we are running this machine without a SA. We have a 3B2/400 with SVR3.0, and I have fooled around a little trying to get this to work. I can manually set the lock file and put a script in the directory /etc/rc0.d that does the backup. The script has init 2 as the last line. When I manually shutdown to single user, it does the backup just fine, but ignores the 'init 2' command -- preferring to stay in single user mode. Has anyone else done something similar to this? Is there any reason not to do it this way (normal users are not allowed to use the cartridge tape at any time, so there's little chance of losing the backup due to ignorance on the part of users)? Would it be better just to backup in multiuser mode by cron, realizing that not much is going on during the middle of the night? Any comments or suggestions will be greatly appreciated! -- Ted H. Emigh, Systems NonAdministrator,Genetics, NCSU, Raleigh, NC uucp: mcnc!ncsuvx!ncsugn!emigh internet: emigh%ncsugn.ncsu.edu BITNET: NEMIGH@TUCC @ncsuvx.ncsu.edu:emigh@ncsugn.ncsu.edu