mitch@rock.sgi.com (Thomas P. Mitchell) (05/23/89)
In article <31330@bu-cs.BU.EDU> eap@bu-it.bu.edu (Eric A. Pearce) writes: > > We have several IRIS 4D's here and I would like to do the following: > > 2. I would like to use bsd dump/restore (and rdump/rrestore) for > backups. Has anybody done this? Caution if you are going to port dump/restore --- dump/restore tools work under the kernel file system. There must be exact knowledge about the file system within the code. The extent file system used in Irix is close but not equal to the BSD fast file system. > Other options I am considering are tar and GNU tar, since the > other systems would be able to read the tapes. GNU tar is > looking pretty attractive, since it supports full and incremental > backups/restores and will run on all of our systems. > > If I missed something in the documentation, please feel free to > point this out. With the exception of the above, the IRIS was very easy > to set up in a networked environment. > There are two schools of thought with regard to backup tools. One is the BSD sneak under the FS for speed dump/restore, and the other that works with and on top of the file system like tar, cpio, bru. Each has its advantages. I (not SGI) would be curious how well gnu_tar works for you. Are you considering nfs mounting the usr file systems, each in turn on one central system for backups? ------------- Thomas P. Mitchell (mitch@sgi.com) Rainbows -- The best (well second best) reason for windows.
eap@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Eric Pearce) (05/24/89)
In article <110@odin.SGI.COM> mitch@rock.sgi.com (Thomas P. Mitchell) says: >Each has its advantages. I (not SGI) would be curious how >well gnu_tar works for you. Are you considering nfs >mounting the usr file systems, each in turn on one central >system for backups? We currently have 5 GTX's and each one is on a different subnet. It is our current policy not to do nfs mounts across routers to minimize network load. It might work to just mount a file system for the duration of the backup though, if it was done at off-peak hours. We do have a "disk-farm" machine that we could use for disk-to-disk backups. (these could then be archived to tape at leisure) The speed and the size of the backup are not as big of an issue as how the backup procedure will fit into the current enviroment. We want to be able to do all the backups remotely, as the machines are squirled away in people's offices. This rules out the internal 1/4 tape for a backup medium, of course. GNU tar seems to mimic the behavior of BSD dump/restore. This means we don't have to retrain the operations staff, as we can make it's use transparent via the shell scripts that already use BSD dump on our other machines. -e -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eric Pearce ARPANET eap@bu-it.bu.edu Boston University Information Technology CSNET eap%bu-it@bu-cs 111 Cummington Street JNET jnet%"ep@buenga" Boston MA 02215 UUCP !harvard!bu-cs!bu-it!eap 617-353-2780 voice 617-353-6260 fax BITNET ep@buenga