[comp.unix.aix] RS6000 remote backups

mijan@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Mijan Huq) (03/22/91)

    We are setting up a network of RS6000's and are in the process
of setting up a procedure for remote backups for the servers. We have
one streaming tapedrive for four servers presently and wish to do backups
from filesystems on the four all to one tapedrive. I am curious to know
how anyone else may have done something similar. Any insights would be
greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

gs26@prism.gatech.EDU (Glenn R. Stone) (03/29/91)

In <46002@ut-emx.uucp> mijan@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Mijan Huq) writes:


>    We are setting up a network of RS6000's and are in the process
>of setting up a procedure for remote backups for the servers. We have
>one streaming tapedrive for four servers presently and wish to do backups
>from filesystems on the four all to one tapedrive. I am curious to know
>how anyone else may have done something similar. Any insights would be
>greatly appreciated.

I hacked gnu tar to work under AIX (had to map <sys/tapes.h> bsd to
<sys/scsi.h> aix, among other things), and use that to back up
across the network.... AIX already has the "rmt" facility built
in, so I didn't bother with the gnu version.... gnu tar does
  (1) incremental backups
  (2) across the network
  (3) by name (can't do rmt by name across net incs with ibm backup)
  (4) provide file of filenames to include/exclude 
  (5) single file system backups
  (6) verify option
  (7) do or don't follow symlinks
  (8) multi-volume archives
  (9) labelled archives
  
among other things..... including a few neat things for interactive 
operation like confirmation of actions interactively and running 
the archive file thru "compress" in the appropriate direction.... 
gnu tar and a few shell scripts involving "rsh" keep me backed up
fairly auotmagically.

-- Glenn R. Stone
gs26@prism.gatech.edu