Appending to Backup Tape with Selective Restore Possible

[Henry Weldon]

Which UNIX backup utility do you recommend I use that would allow each days backup to append to the same tape so that the tape only needs to be changed once a week? I'm looking for a free utility that will also allow for easy restore of selected files/directries under this situation. If you have scripts doing this now, I would love to see them.

[Helen French]

Hi,

You can use fbackup to do an incremental backups. Check man pages of fbackup, options 0-9 will select the incremental type.

If you want more scheduled and automated backup, use Omniback II or Legato Networker

HTH,
Shiju

[Krishna Prasad]

Fbackup is the only free utility that I know of.

[Sanjay_6]

Hi Henry,

I don't think there is any free utility which you can use to do this. you can take a backup using standard unix backup commands and using norewind device. This way you can write multiple backups to the same tape. However restoring from a particular backup in such a scene could be hairy.

Hope this helps.

Regds

[Pal Szabo_1]

Hi!

I think you should use the tar command.And mt for
tape positioning,
and marking.
And you should use non-rewinding device.


I suggest one script solution:
(It requires tar,mt,and an
index database on your computer)

The backup session could be:
tar cf /dev/rmt/0 /filesys1
mt -f /dev/rmt/0 eof
# this writes eof marks
tar cf /dev/rmt/0 /filesys2
mt -f /dev/rmt/0 eof

Next backup session:
# Go to the end of tape
mt -t /dev/rmt/0 eod
# (Only for DDS)
# for DLT you should go
# with fsf until the end
tar cf /dev/rmt/0 /filesys1
mt -f /dev/rmt/0 eof

Restore session:
# Rewind the tape
mt -f /dev/rmt/0
# Go for the appropriate position
for i in count
do
mt -f /dev/rmt/0 fsf
done
tar xf /dev/rmt/0 filename

But if you seeking an elegant solution Omniback is good for you.
(But it is a bit expensive)

Unfortunately the HPUX backup utility (fbackup) utility. doesn't append files to the end of the tape.

[harry d brown jr]

Henry,

gnu's tar allows you to append files to an existing tar archive, and allows you to do a tar to a remote tape drive.

http://www.gnu.org/manual/tar/html_mono/tar.html#SEC48
main page for gnu's tar:
http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/tar.html


live free or die
harry

[harry d brown jr]

Henry,

Also, here is the PORTED version of gnu's tar:

http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Gnu/tar-1.13.25/

live free or die
harry

[Erik Allaert]

I think using dump and mt is better than tar/mt as mentioned above.

Laters

[harry d brown jr]

With GNU's tar, you don't need to use "mt", it will do it for you!


live free or die
harry

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi Henry

You are asking for a major problem if you backup one weeks data on one tape.
The safest method is one backup one tape.

Paula