Remote backup

[sokolova]

what is the steps to take remote backup from hp-ux to solaris?
the tape device is connected on solaris box?
please advise

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

HP-UX fbackup can not use remote tape devices, they have to be local.

What you can to is install the Data Protector Agent on the HP-UX box and the server for Solaris (I'm pretty sure it is available) and do the backup like that. The process must be initiated by the physical owner of the tape drive.

SEP

[OldSchool]

SEP:

man page indicates that fbackup does indeed support remote devices, provided "rmt" is available.


excerpt from man page:
-f device
device specifies the name of an output file. If the name of the file is -, fbackup writes to the standard output. There is no default output file; at least one must be specified. If more than one output file is specified, fbackup uses each one successively and then repeats in a cyclical pattern. Patterns can be used in the device name in a manner resembling file name expansion as done by the shell (see sh-bourne(1) and other shell manual entries). The patterns must be protected from expansion by the shell by quoting them. The expansion of the pattern results in all matching names being in the list of devices used.

There is slightly different behavior if remote devices are used. A device on the remote machine can be specified in the form machine:device. fbackup creates a server process from /usr/sbin/rmt on the remote machine to access the tape device. If /usr/sbin/rmt does not exist on the remote system, fbackup creates a server process from /etc/rmt on the remote machine to access the tape device. Only magnetic tapes can be....

[Bill Hassell]

Note that fbackup only runs on HP-UX and the rmt protocol is not defined as an industry standard. So it's likely that your Solaris system will not respond to rmt calls. Note also that the remote system must allow root remote shell (remsh on HP-UX, rsh on other systems) to start the rmt process.

But before you look at a remote backup, be sure you know how you will restore the system if the root disk is trashed. A program like frecover cannot run without an OS running already. Ignite/UX would be the choice (similar to Jumpstart on Solaris but incompatible).

[OldSchool]

also...tape drives can be (depending upon model) inexpensive. I prefer local tapes simply for the easy of ignite'ing the system if required and not having to rely on network connection / speed for backup