DVD-RAM on B2000 running HP-UX 10.20

[John Broussard]

I would like to use a DVD-RAM drive for file backup on our new B2000 workstation. I have done a little experimentation using HP-UX and the drive. A disk in the DVD-RAM drive showed up under SAM, and I was able to create a logical volume and a file system on it and to mount it. However, attempting a file copy to the disk proved disastrous (file copy would not cancel, a restart was required).

I have had success with a third party utility called MagnaVault from Tracer Technologies, which uses their own file system for reading and writing to the drive. However, if possible, I would prefer to stick with native HP-UX tools.

Any help that could be provided regarding native HP-UX tools or other third party utilities would be greatly appreciated.

[James R. Ferguson]

John:

The best (my opinion) file-backup utility (and it's free) for HP-UX in fbackup/frecover. See the man pages for a description and do a search in the Knowledge Base and in this forum for some recent threads on optimizing it. fbackup was designed to allow backups while the system is in use. You can easily do incremental and/or complete backups. A graph (file) allows you to include and/or exclude files and/or directories.

...JRF...

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

DVD-RAM is not a simple disk. Checkout eMedia magazine or other sources on the net concerning CDROM, CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-RAM and you'll notice that the formats and special setups (ie, SCSI control commands) are quite complex. You'll need special software that supports DVD-RAM on HP-UX to make this work. HP-UX has no built-in support for writing and CD or DVD disc.