File-System Backup- tar vs fbackup

[SM_3]

When backing up a File System what factors need considering when using commands such as fbackup, tar or any other backup command?

What commands are ideal when a full File System needs a backup compared to a few files or a few directories?

[Duncan Edmonstone · Accepted solution]

I'd read some of the posts from Bill Hassell on why *not* to use tar (and why to use fbackup) - He says it better than I ever could!

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x77727e990647d4118fee0090279cd0f9,00.html
http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x6b5768c57f64d4118fee0090279cd0f9,00.html

For more, try seraching the forum with serach string "bill hassell fbackup tar"

HTH

Duncan

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Few files are directories, tar should work fine. tar has limitations.

For regular system backups, fbackup is the choice. It allows you to do incremental backup too and can spawn across multiple media.

Look at the following document

http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/B2355-90672/B2355-90672.html

Section that says backing up and restoring the data. There is a comparison of all the utilities.

My vote goes to fbackup for regular scheduled backups.

-Sri

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I'll make this very brief. If you are doing backups on HP and are NOT concerned about cross-platform compatability then fbackup always wins - if full or incremental.

fbackup will also handle files larger than 2GB whereas tar will not.

You might consider downloading and installing the Gnu version of tar from any of the HP-UX Porting Centre's. It has much better error recovery, will handle large files, and is available on a large variety of platforms.

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

If you are really serious about backups then you should look into a commercial backup system like OmniBack. This will allow fully automated backups and 'point-and-click' restores.

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

SM

It depends on what do u want to achive.


Tar is a higly portable utility , incase you want to copy files and send it to antother amchine then tar is the best one , also this is one of the older utilities for backup so more stable and less cubersome . Thoug there are limitations like 2.0 Gb ( GNU tar doesnt ahve this )

However for systems backup and retrival fabck is better.


Manoj Srivastava

[SM_3]

That's exactly the kind of information I was looking for.
Thanks.

Duncan thanks for the Hassell thread it's good. In one of the threads he did not get any points.
Well out of order!

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

A free utility that will accomodate full and incremental backups is 'fbackup'. I choose this over 'tar' for the clear majority of uses.

'fbackup/'frecover' will allow the backup of inuse files and retry their backup 'maxretries' times if the timestamp noted on disk at the beginning of the backup is different once an image has been moved to tape. Further, if no "static" copy of the file can be transferred to tape, the copy of the file on the tape will be marked "bad" and you will *not* be able to recover it.

Graph files are easily created to specify what you want copied, and what you want excluded. Whole directories can be selected, and then individual files or subdirectories excluded. An index of the backup is written to the tape and can later be extracted to serve as a recovery graph templlate, too.

'fbackup' supports largefiles, too, something that 'tar' and 'cpio' don't do in their standard HP-released forms.

Regards!

...JRF...

[SM_3]

What is tar good for if anything?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

'tar' is common-change. You can port a 'tar' tape to any flavor of Unix. 'fbackup'/'frecover' are HP-proprietary and hence you will not be able to take a 'fbackup' tape and 'frecover' it elsewhere.

As noted, already, the GNU version of 'tar' supports largefiles. In addition, PHCO_26423 for 11.11 implements support for up to 8GB archives.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Volker Borowski]

Hi,

fbackup always rewinds the tape and starts a new write cycle. So you can not manage several save-sets on one tape.
You can write more tar archives to the same tape with the norewind device and positioning commands. This is usefull, if you need just to backup small amounts of data and do not want to use a new tape for each run.

But I have to admit, that I use fbackup through SAM in most cases.

Volker

[steven Burgess_2]

Hi

Get your fbackup codes

dumpmsg /usr/lib/nls/C/fbackup.cat | more

There are also codes for frecover

#dumpmsg /usr/lib/nls/C/frecover.cat | more

Steve

[Arockia Jegan]

... tar is best as you can use this backup in various unix flavours. fbackup is giving lot of problems if we try to take backup in 9940 tape libraries...

[Martin Johnson]

fbackup can handle sparse files, tar cannot. If you have software that uses sparse files (like HP Openview Operations(OVO/VPO/ITO/OpC)), you must use fbackup. Restoring a sparse file with tar will probably fill your file system.


Marty

[Scott Van Kalken]

You also need to consider how portable you want your data to be as well.

I prefer dump myself.

[Tore_1]

I had a small problem with fbackup ( I only used in once). When I started the backup I got a warning about missing label or something, and when the backup was finished it reported that the backup contained a warning.
Unfortunately, fbackup doesnt log these errormessages so it was difficult to verify that the backup was 100% ok. Any comments?

[Frank Slootweg]

Tore,

fbackup writes *all* of its messages, i.e. both normal *and* error messages, to standard error. So if you want to log these, make sure that standard error is redirected to a file ("2>/path/file").

[fbackup does not use standard output for messages because standard output can be used for the backup itself ("-f -").]

You can verify/list an fbackup backup with:

/frecover -r[m][v]N -f /dev/rmt/... 2>/path/file