"Link has been severed"

[Tim C. Hall]

  Hi all,
    I have an extremely aggravating problem.  We run backup scripts
  nightly that gather all modified files into a monster file in cpio
  format, then transfer that file to a centralized backup host something
  like this:

  find / -mtime -5 -print | cpio -ocB > $BACKUPFILE
  mount -d BACKUP /usr/remote
  (where BACKUP is a remote directory advertised through RFS)
  cp $BACKUPFILE /usr/remote

    Everything works fine until the cp statement is run.  About half the
  time the file copies successfully.  The other half of the time it will
  bomb out saying "cp: Link has been severed".  We've tried using cpio
  instead, but it does exactly the same thing with the error statement:

	"cpio:write() in bwrite() failed

		     Link has been severed"

    I've had this happen to me while running the script manually, and the
  wierd thing is the remote directory is still mounted and accessible
  after the failure.  I've checked the network immediately after such a 
  failure, and it's fine.  Is there any way to fix this problem, or to make
  cp or cpio more fault tolerant so they will retry?  Some days this
  never happens, other days it does this constantly.  Any comments
  or suggestions are more than welcome.  Please reply via e-mail to:
  thall%spacecom.spacenet-gw.af.mil at server.af.mil   

  Thanks in advance.

				 Mr. Tim C. Hall, System Administrator
				 Air Force Space Command