Backing up two computers on one tape with UUCP

[Bill Irwin]

I've  got  this  scenario where one computer has too much  disk  used  to
backup  on  its 60Mb tape.  The sysadm would like to backup a portion  of
the  file system over a direct uucp link onto a system with a 150Mb tape.
Neither  system has enough free disk space to hold a tar archive on  disk
while it is being transferred between systems.

Let's  call the first computer "s60" and the 2nd one "s150".  My  thought
was  to run a script on s150 that is passed a list of directories on  s60
that  need  backing up.  For each directory the script would send a  uucp
executable across to s60 that would:

find /usr/start/point -type f -print | xargs uucp destination/dir

If  this would transfer each file in the directory tree to some point  on
s150, then they would be available to tar on s150.  The script would have
to  wait until the find process running on s60 had finished, then run tar
on destination/dir.

When the tar had completed, destination/dir would be removed to make room
for  the next batch of files from s60.  The script would basically repeat
the above steps for each dir required.

1. start process on remote that transfers files to local
2. tar files on local to 150Mb tape
3. remove files on local
4. goto step 1

This  whole  wonderful theory depends on having the ability to  have  TAR
*append*  the  2nd  batch  to  the end of the  first  archive.   Has  TAR
developed this ability over the years?

The  other critical point is having the local script wait for the  remote
process  to finish sending files.  I don't know if this is possible using
the UUCP programs.

I know what you're thinking - get TCP/IP on Ethernet.  But there's a side
of me that loves challenges like this and the adventure of seeing it come
together.

Am I wasting my time or does this idea sound plausible?
-- 
Bill Irwin    -       The Westrheim Group     -    Vancouver, BC, Canada
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