agm@daphne.stl.stc.co.uk (Andrew G. Minter) (04/11/91)
I've been having lots of fun with backup and restore under Minix. I've
had to do complete dumps and restores 2-3 times due to repartitioning my
hard disk. Yesterday I did it again when I installed a 100Mb 105AT
Quantum ProDrive in my Elonex laptop (incidently, this is a fast IDE
drive and I got it working with no trouble at all - recommended).
I've also tried on various occasions to restore individual files from a backup.
The things I would really like to be able to do are (in order of preference):
1. Dump and restore whole file systems very reliably.
2. Restore individual files or sets of files with out going through a vast
pile of floppies.
3. Incremental dumps.
4. Dumps of part of a file system (subtree).
I'd also like compression, I think this could actually make the dump
faster as well as save disk space.
My problem is this: I can't seem to find a good piece of software that
will do all these things.
The tar/[compress]/vol approach more or less meets criteria 1 and 4 but
you're really cooked if you have even one bad block on one floppy.
The dump/restore package posted a while back looks like a good start,
but it has plenty of bugs. I had to patch it to make it restore whole
file systems at all. It also seems to have a tendancy to lose file
ownership information. It doesn't do compression. Overall I like it,
but I'm terrified it will lose my data for me if I rely on it.
I'm getting pretty desperate folks and I can't believe that nobody else
has the same problem. What do people do?
If there really is nothing about that will do the job and there is
enough interest then I think I'll go ahead and write something.
Andrew
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+-----------------------------+--------------------------------+paula@atc.boeing.com (Paul Allen) (04/13/91)
In article <4208@stl.stc.co.uk> agm@daphne.stl.stc.co.uk (Andrew G. Minter) writes: >[... about adventures with dump/restore ..] >The things I would really like to be able to do are (in order of preference): > >1. Dump and restore whole file systems very reliably. >2. Restore individual files or sets of files with out going through a vast > pile of floppies. >3. Incremental dumps. >4. Dumps of part of a file system (subtree). > >I'd also like compression, I think this could actually make the dump >faster as well as save disk space. [...] >I'm getting pretty desperate folks and I can't believe that nobody else >has the same problem. What do people do? I ported GNU tar. It does multivolume full or incremental backups. It understands an extended "GNU" tar format for incremental backups that contains information about deleted files in addition to new and changed files. It can compress the archive, although I haven't bothered to get this working with multi-volume archives. It can skip over damaged parts of an archive. It's got a list of options as long as your arm. :-) I think I had a version of GNU tar (or pdtar) working before I switched over to 32-bit mode on my 386, but that's been more than a year ago and my memory gets fuzzy. :-) John Gilmore's pdtar may be smaller (and so easier to build on 16-bit Minix), but it doesn't have the nice GNU incremental dump extensions. I could probably generate diffs for my port of GNU tar, but if someone else has done a port that they're particularly proud of, I would be happy to let them post theirs instead. Anybody interested in my diffs? Anybody else already have diffs ready to post? Paul Allen -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Paul L. Allen | pallen@atc.boeing.com Boeing Advanced Technology Center | ...!uw-beaver!bcsaic!pallen
leisner.wbst139@xerox.com (04/13/91)
I like GNU tar and use it on all my Unix systems... Many years ago I ported GNU tar to Minix (using Aztec C) and recalled no major problems. Not recently thought... The GNU stuff is great -- if it fits on Minix (64kcode/data) it should be used... marty (Knowledge is useful in the Information Age) (Software is mindstuff. It is the hardest activity created by man) ARPA: leisner.wbst139@xerox.com NS: leisner:wbst139:xerox UUCP: hplabs!arisia!leisner
HBO043%DJUKFA11.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Christoph van Wuellen) (04/15/91)
Indeed a port of GNU tar to MINIX is simple: Just throw AWAY all that dirty MINIX stuff and use the USG code... and, make sys/file.h a link to fcntl.h C.v.W.