backup difficulties

[Ray Loyzaga]

In article <SHAWN.91Jan7121818 at litsun8.epfl.edu> shawn at litsun.epfl.ch writes:
> 
>   DUMP: Date of this level 9 dump: Mon Jan  7 12:00:02 1991
>   DUMP: Date of last level 0 dump: the epoch
>   DUMP: Dumping /u/giraud to /dev/rst8
>   DUMP: bad sblock magic number
>   DUMP: The ENTIRE dump is aborted.
> 
> 
> When I to a "dump f /dev/rst8 /u/username "
> I get the above error message. What's my problem?

try specifying the filesystem device, not the directory path of its mount.
I think sblock stands for "super block" in this case.

Do you realy just want a level 9 dump? You should probably also set the
u flag to update the dumpdates file and some sort of blocking factor
to speed it up. The sun manual on dump is not very explicit on how it
treats a filename argument rather than a filesystem argument.

The cartridge drive is not the problem in the above.