aem@aber-cs.UUCP (Alec D.E. Muffett) (03/26/91)
The powers that be at our site (who remember the good old days of running PDP-11's and a Honeywell L66 as a general university service) have decreed that the one thing that is missing from our twin Dec 5830 Ultrix-4.1 based user service is - wait for it - * AN ARCHIVE UTILITY * We have about 18Gb of disk spread over two user machines, and we do backups on two DAT drives, so storage is no problem. In order to keep space free we also "cron" a process every so often which compresses any large file which has not been accessed for 'n' days. Users seem fairly happy about this, and some were awestruck at how much f/s they could save. We also run a hacked about version of the Gould (Holland) Batch system for batch & tape management (this satisfies our chemists), and things are fairly peaceful. However, the bosses have decreed we must now have either an archive service or a damn good argument against one. It would be nice to have the ability to invisibly copy stuff on and off tape, but I'm not sure that most of our users would use it under Unix. I am equally unsure whether an archive utility has ever been written for Unix, probably since Unix has no well defined tape management interface. I've never heard of one. Therefore:- *** QUESTION *** Does anyone know of a good, simple, hackable, preferably PD, Archiving utility for unix ? Comments about archiving in general would be welcomed, as well as flames about the subject... it might prove enlightening to the bosses... 8) Advthanksance, alec 8) -- JANET: aem@uk.ac.aber INET: aem@cs.aber.ac.uk or aem@aber.ac.uk UUCP: *!mcsun!ukc!aber!aem BITNET: aem%aber@ukacrl ARPA: aem%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk,aem%uk.ac.aber@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk SNAIL: Alec Muffett, Computer Unit, Llandinam UCW, Aberystwyth, UK, SY23 3DB