jipping@cs.hope.edu (Mike Jipping) (07/16/90)
Archive-name: sundump/10-Jul-90 Original-posting-by: jipping@cs.hope.edu (Mike Jipping) Original-subject: SUMMARY: Backups when Mediahost != Server Archive-site: smaug.cs.hope.edu [35.197.146.1] Archive-directory: /pub Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) This has been a while, but I owe a summary to this list...so... I asked a question about what people do about the situation when the mediahost for system backups is not the same host as the server. Situations such as server crashes make me nervous when all my backups are done on an Exabyte connected to a SS-1 across the net somewhere (our server is a 3/160). And the problem becomes more acute when the software to do the backup uses special formats of their own (e.g., "supersaver") or non-standard (or innovative) archiving techniques (e.g., "8mmbackup", which uses cpio). This is no criticism [no flames please] just a plea for what works best in a critical backup/restore situation. I got several replies. The ones I used: 1) Make a local backup of / and /usr on the server. When the disk crashes, these will help get the server up to the point where dumps from the 8mm across the network can be read. (DEFINITELY A GOOD IDEA. We had a disk problem which resulted in a corrupted root -- BEFORE I backed it up to local tape. OUCH!) 2) Use dump for backups to the Exabyte. It's not the best, but it's the most standard right now. The other replies were good, but not so useful for our installation. MANY THANKS to all who replied, including Henry Clark, Bill Eggers, Leon Holworth, Edwardo Krell, Ian MaPhedran, Robert McGraw, Ruth Milner, and Grenville Whelan. BTW, to help in using "dump" for Exabyte network backups, Grenville Whelan from Sun/UK provided me with a very useful Bourne shell script that serves as a front end to dump -- and can dump any filesystem from anywhere in the network. It organizes the dumps on the available tapes -- and can string your dumps over multiple tapes. It's useful for ANY tape media, since it's just a front-end -- we use for our Exabyte with no problem. The script is called "sundump". It is available from smaug.cs.hope.edu (35.197.146.1) as ~ftp/pub/sundump.tar.Z Mike Jipping Internet: jipping@cs.hope.edu Hope College BITNET: JIPPING@HOPE Department of Computer Science Voice: Hey!