backup systems.

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Thu, 10 Apr 2003 08:28:21 -0400
R Ransbottom <vze4zk6s at verizon.net> wrote:

> Dump/restore are filesystem specific.  This can be a good
> reason to avoid them.  Have multiple systems that can
> read your data is a nice convenience.
> 
> I'd vote for cpio output by scripts or amanda.
> 
> The suggestion to use a list of filesystems to backup
> is bad.  Use a list of filesystems to avoid backing up.
> Write your script to backup everything except specified
> directories (/proc /tmp).  Then when filesystems are
> created years from now they will automatically be backed
> up.
I concur here. Over time you may change the makeup of a filesystem,
especially after upgrading. Tar and cpio are certainly available on most
Unix and Linux systems. One advantage to using tar or cpio is that you
can backup on one type of a system (eg. Red Hat Linux) and restore to
another system (eg. Tru64 Unix or Solaris).  It is sometimes very
important that backups are maintained for a long period of time. I once
worked on a system where the company had to restate its financials going
back 5 years because of an error that occured 5 years prior. We had to
pull data from the old backups. So, whether you use a backup utility,
such as amanda or a standard Unix/Linux utility such as tar or cpio,
portability of your backup archives can be important. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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