sahayman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Steve Hayman) (12/23/88)
What kind of software engineering is this? I was doing a "wbak" as part of our normal backup procedure. At the start of the fourth tape, after wbak prompted me to mount another tape, my fingers got a little ahead of my brain and I typed "go" a split second before the tape came online. wbak's response? "Unexpected error - tape offline" OK fine. Now any sane backup tool would surely say "Do you want to retry the open?" and give you another chance. It's not as if "tape offline" is some sort of bizarre totally unexpected error condition. But what does wbak do when it finds the tape offline? It QUITS! I have to start all over again! Three hours of work down the drain! Thank you Apollo! Merry Christmas to you too! Grrr. Give me "dump(8)" or give me death.
dbfunk@ICAEN.UIOWA.EDU (David B. Funk) (12/23/88)
If SR10 wbak does do: > ahead of my brain and I typed "go" a split second before the tape came online. > > wbak's response? "Unexpected error - tape offline" > > OK fine. Now any sane backup tool would surely say "Do you want > to retry the open?" and give you another chance. It's not > as if "tape offline" is some sort of bizarre totally unexpected > error condition. > > But what does wbak do when it finds the tape offline? It QUITS! then what you've found is a bug, not a "feature". Pre-SR10 wbak (SR9.0-SR9.7), in the same situation would have given an error message like: ** Operator error: The magtape unit is offline. Please place the unit online and type <return> to continue. (Yes, I've see this more than once.) I've not encountered the problem that you hit, but please call that in, it sounds like a nasty bug that should be fixed.
ross@sword.ulowell.edu (Ross Miller) (12/24/88)
From article <15995@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>, by sahayman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Steve Hayman): > What kind of software engineering is this? I was doing a "wbak" as > part of our normal backup procedure. At the start of the fourth tape, > after wbak prompted me to mount another tape, my fingers got a little > ahead of my brain and I typed "go" a split second before the tape came online. > wbak's response? "Unexpected error - tape offline" > OK fine. Now any sane backup tool would surely say "Do you want > to retry the open?" and give you another chance. It's not > as if "tape offline" is some sort of bizarre totally unexpected > error condition. Reasonable. > But what does wbak do when it finds the tape offline? It QUITS! > I have to start all over again! Three hours of work down the drain! > Thank you Apollo! Merry Christmas to you too! Bah, Humbug should have been added. > Grrr. > > Give me "dump(8)" or give me death. dump(8) works on file systems. The apollo domain file system is different from regular unix. Because of these differences it is able to handle very large numbers of workstations sharing all file systems to look like one big file system. Therefore, what is the definition of dump in this enviroment? Should it attempt to backup up the whole network? Or just the local disk? Or maybe even just a tree. I think the solution is an overall better backup/archival system than wbak, but not dump. Something with some of the nice concepts of dump and restore would be useful, but I for one like to see operating systems advance, and not stay stagnent on Unix and C. I mean, I kinda liked NOS on the old CDC's, because it did exactly what you told it to do and did not try to outsmart itself. But, I wouldn't ask everyone to use it. We must push forward and not become mired in "current" ideas and software. Ross
durriya@apollo.COM (Durriya Netterwala) (12/28/88)
In article <15995@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> sahayman@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (Steve Hayman) writes: > >part of our normal backup procedure. At the start of the fourth tape, >after wbak prompted me to mount another tape, my fingers got a little >ahead of my brain and I typed "go" a split second before the tape came online. > >wbak's response? "Unexpected error - tape offline" > During tape swaps wbak should and did handle offline correctly (i.e it would prompt if the tape was offline). Unfortunately at sr9.7 this was broken by some changes made. This bug also got carried over to sr10. Anyway, we have already sent a patch tape out for /lib/tfp for the sr9.7 version and will be doing the same for sr10 very soon. Hope this helps. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Durriya Netterwala UUCP: {decwrl!decvax, mit-eddie, attunix}!apollo!durriya Apollo Computer ARPA: apollo!durriya@eddie.mit.edu INTERNET: durriya@apollo.com -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Durriya Netterwala UUCP: {decwrl!decvax, mit-eddie, attunix}!apollo!durriya Apollo Computer ARPA: apollo!durriya@eddie.mit.edu INTERNET: durriya@apollo.com