tar frustration (was Re: relative pathname question!)

[Anthony A. Datri]

In article <64026 at sun.uucp> pope at vatican (John Pope) writes:

>	tar cf /dev/rst8 `cat save_list` 

>As a side note, SunOS has a handy "X" option to tar, which specifies a
>filename containing files to exclude from the backup:

>	tar cfX /dev/rst8 exclude_list `cat save_list` 

All well and good, but the shell continues to have a command line
length limit.  What I'd like is a *real* backup utility.  Twenex DUMPER
or even VMS BACKUP will let you do the right thing -- "backup all
files in these directories that have changed since this time, and use
more than one tape if you have to."  Dump will use more than one tape,
but acts on filesystems, not directories.  We've got a sun 3/180
here acting as a server to a bunch of machines, and several 3/50's
with local disks.  There's a directory under /usr where user files
are stored on the local disks, and we have to back it up.  rdump
will work for incrementals, but it still doesn't have the ability
to take more than one filesystem per command, so if you want to
put more than one filesystem on a tape, you have to hope that you
have enough tape to fit it.  Doing a weekly full dump, the whole
/usr partition goes out, wasting lots of tape, and requiring someone
to babysit the drive to keep feeding it tapes.  With tar, I can
say "just backup everything in /foo/u and /bar/u" where
/foo and /bar are NFS mounted /usr partitions on the 3/50's with
disks.  But that won't do multiple tapes.

Even HP's tcio will let you tar onto multiple tapes.  It's ugly,
but it works.  What I'd really like to see is for Sun to come out with
a decent backup system, something that Unix lacks, especially in
a Sun environment, where you've got files all over the place with
NFS.  I don't mind getting to the remote things through NFS mounts
on the central machine, but I *would* like to be able to back up
just what I want with one or two commands.  Perhaps a DUMPER
port is in order...:-)


-- 
@disclaimer(Any concepts or opinions above are entirely mine, not those of my
	    employer, my GIGI, or my 11/34)
beak is								  beak is not
Anthony A. Datri,SysAdmin,StepstoneCorporation,stpstn!aad