File system dump and restoration

[Macy Hallock]

In article <775 at lilink.UUCP> mikej at lilink.UUCP (Michael R. Johnston) writes:
>On our Altos machines at work we have a utility called "dump.hd" which
>dumps the entire root filesystem to tape. By using this program on
>can create a COMPLETE image of the hard drive that can be used to restore
>a crashed system etc. 

I have tried to restore SCO systems several times using tar, dd, cpio
and other methods, with little luck.  This makes upgrading to a new
hard disk a burdensome task.  SCO is little help.  I suspect this
is part of their serialization/copy protection scheme.  It's defintely
a blemish on an otherwise sound and useful product.

The best advice I received so far is in the articles from "Discover"
(SCO's magazine/newsletter) I got via anonymous uucp from SCO
(/usr/spool/uucppublic/SLS/xnx114.z from sosco).  A previous
article in this group gave the details on this.

(To give credit where credit is due: SCO has the right idea with
posting updates/info this way.  Keep it up, SCO - how 'bout posting
the rest of the updates/supplements this way - its got to save SCO
a bundle in 800 line time, and it lets the technical people out
here in the field do our job better AND make SCO more attractive
to us and end users to boot)

I am going to try a backup using an outside vendor's backup package,
but I'm not sure I'll get good results.  I am not a good enough
wizard to fathom SCO's method here.

Ross, you got anything to say about this?

            Macy Hallock                 fmsystm!macy at NCoast.ORG
           F M Systems, Inc.             hal!ncoast!fmsystm!macy
           150 Highland Dr.              uunet!aablue!fmsystm!macy
           Medina, OH 44256              Voice: 216-723-3000 X251  
 Disclaimer:  My advice is worth what you paid for it. Your milage may vary.