checking fbackup

[Konrad Hegner]

Hi all
How can I check a fbackup and a make_recovery tape? How I know, that the backup was successfully?
I know, that a make_recovery tape can be checked with 'sea ipl' by booting. If there more possibilities and what is the best solution for fbackup?

Thanks Konrad

[Massimo Bianchi]

HI,
the best solution is to do a
/usr/sbin/frecover -f $TAPE -I $I/DDS.indice

where $TAPE is your tape device and
$I is a directory.

this will create an index of what you have backup up.

HTH,
Massimo

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Konrad:

'fbackup' will exist with one of four return values when run:

0 = normal end-of-task
1 = interrupted run; restart possible
2 = errors occured
4 = warnings noted

Thus, you can consider the run successful for return values zero or four. Personally, I like to do 'fbackup' with the '-V path' option to produce volume header information written to 'path' if the backup is successful. The file so specified is written by fbackup *ONLY* upon sucessful completion, and thus serves as a useful marker to distinguish between a "normal" completion without an actual backup (e.g. an operator aborted the session for a missing tape), and a truly, successful backup. See the 'fbackup' man pages for more information.

In addition to the above, you can leverage 'frecover' to further verify a 'fbackup'. Simply run 'frecover' with the '-N' option. This prevents an actual recovery of any files to disk, but reads the backup tape as if it was, in fact, recovering the data, producing the same output that it would during a normal recovery. This option is useful for verifying backup media contents in terms of validity (block checksum errors are reported), and contents (a listing of files can be produced by using the '-N' and '-v' options together).
See the 'frecover' man pages for more detail, too.

For Ignite 'make_tapeA_recovery' tapes, you can read the tape and produce a directory listing fo "verify" tape integrity:

# mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn fsf 1
# tar -xvf /dev/rmt/0m filename

Of course, when Ignite 'make_tape_recovery' runs, it reports its success or failure with a standard return code. It also records its events in '/var/opt/ignite/recovery/latest/recovery.log' which can easily be examined and/or parsed.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Konrad,

You can recover the 'index' of the files backed up by using the "-I" option of frecover command. However, it is not a true verification of the backup as fbackup writes the index first and then the contents.

So, I would suggest to use "-N" (no recovery)option. See the man page details.

/usr/sbin/frecover -f /dev/rmt/0m -Nrov

For make_tape_recovery, there are two things to verify.

1. Boot Area

dd if=/dev/rmt/0mn of=/somewhere/bootarea bs=2k

Use the regular "lifls" and "lifcp" commands on bootarea file to verify the contents.

2. File data details

mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn rew
mt -t /dev/rmt/0mn fsf 1
tar tvf /dev/rmt/0mn

-Sri