moving large file system for short term test

[Joe Robinson_2]

I have a large file (approx 6 Gb) system that I want to copy to another system for a short term test.

- I don't have a tape drive on the "new" system, so I can't backup/restore the data from system to system.

I'd like to use tar; is there a way to exclude certain parts of the file system when making tarballs? I don't necessarily need all of the file system...

Thanks!

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Joe:

One way is simply to use use 'rcp -r' and recursively copy the directories you need.

Instead of using 'tar', another approach is to use 'fbackup'. You have the ability with 'fbakcup' graphs to exclude and include whatever you need. In the absence of a tape drive, you can create the 'fbackup' on a disk. When done, copy the disk resident file to your other server and use 'frecover' to restore its contents.

Regards!

...JRF...

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Yes but it's much easier to use fbackup/frecover because the graph file makes it trivially easy to include/exclude files and directories. Of course, fbackup/frecover is only an option if you are going from HP-UX to HP-UX. Your other option that allows easy fine granularity is
cpio. You either feed cpio from a find or from a list of files that you wish to backup --- which is all a find output piped to cpio does.

You could also do something like:
cd /srcdir
find . print > /var/tmp/mylist
and then manually edit mylist.
Finally:
cd /srcdir
cat /var/tmp/mylist | cpio -ocv > /xxx/myfile.cpio

Of course, it's much easier to either sucessively build your list with multiple finds with proper filter or multiplr filters in a single find.

[Joe Robinson_2]

Thanks, guys!