rogerj@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Roger Jagoda) (06/22/91)
Folks, Tell me if this sounds rediculous. We want to make a backup set of Ultrix tapes. You know, we want to be cautious and backup our original distrbution so that is anything goes wrong we have another bootable tape. You know, just like they used to tell you in the PC world...MAKE BACKUPs!!!. Well, I know they have something like this in VMS-land. I think it's called StayBAck for Stand-Alone Backup. Is there a similar feature for Ultrix? Alternatively, is there a way, or has anyone tried doing the following: use dd to copy a whole tape to disk, then use dd again to copy that disk to a blank tape. Would this work to copy the bootblocks? Remember in booting, we'd need the bootblocks, Ultrixboot and something that acts as a bootable image, either a mini-kernel (System Managment in the Install menu) or vmunix. Has anyone ever done something like this? Is it just rediculous that we'd want to make a backup of a tape, or another bootable tape of our urrent kernel for disaster recovery? The other alternative is to either keep a spare disk around with a full dump of the bootable file system, or to pray that the tape's never get damaged whih is just nota very comfortable situation. Or are we just being paranoid? Remember, even with a full Maint. Contract, the best DEC could do is give you a new disk. The data you'd have to replace yourself...AFTER you boot it up with...with...a BOOTABLE TAPE!!!! Of course we'd also like to protect our Fortran Tape and our WP tape....etc. So if anyone else has an idea of how to do this, let me know! I'll post a summary if there's enough response. So far 24 other people have asked me the same question so if anyone else wants the answer, drop me a line and I'll kick back the summary if there is one. Thanks in advance!! --Roger Jagoda --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger Jagoda -- A wise man adapts Systems and Network Manager himself to a changing world. Laboratory for Plasma Studies -- A foolish man tries Cornell University to force the world to adapt to him. (607) 255-6115 -- Therefore most roger@ionvax.tn.cornell.edu progress is due to foolish men. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --