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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!zombie.ncsc.mil!news.mathworks.com!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!usenet.ucs.indiana.edu!bridge.bloomington.in.us!pi From: pi@bridge.bloomington.in.us (Raymond L. Gilbert) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Floppy-based tape drive questions. Date: 4 Jun 1995 17:26:02 GMT Organization: A FreeBSD Enthusiast Lines: 74 Message-ID: <3qsqba$4hd@usenet.ucs.indiana.edu> References: <kientzleD97Cru.3nw@netcom.com> <3qhckj$hpf@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: xyplex4-1-6.ucs.indiana.edu Thus it was recorded by the prophets, joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de said: >Be warned however, that the ft driver maintainer for FreeBSD himself >does _not_ recommend people using floppy tapes. OK OK well the damage is done... a floppy-interface drive was really all I could afford. :-) I've been using it for the last year. >In addition to what Terry has already explained, let me tell'ya some >reasons for using `dump' for regularly backups: [many fine reasons deleted] Wow. Sounds great. OK you sold me! I would love to use dump for my regular system backups. The question then becomes, how do I go about doing this from a floppy-interface drive? I've been tar'ing stuff and piping it through /sbin/ft (note: I'm still using 1.1.5.1R). The trouble is, piping something through the ft command is just about the *only* way I can communicate with my drive. I can do things like: % echo test | ft ; ft | cat test But something simpler like: % echo test > /dev/ft0 (or rft0, etc) produce a page fault and reboots my system. Similar things happen when I try to pass my tape device along to tar or dump, eg % dump -u0f /dev/ft0 /usr % tar czvfp /dev/ft0 /usr % tar czvfp - /usr > /dev/ft0 Is this a "feature" in the ft driver to only let /sbin/ft communicate with /dev/[r]ft*, or is it a bug that's fixed in 2.0.5? Other questions with dump/ft: ft doesn't seem to handle multiple volumes on a single tape. Ideally, I'd like to do a full fs backup on one tape, and do incremental backups on a second multivolumed tape--this would let me keep my tape in my system and let cron do the incremental backups, say once a week, then let me do a full backup by hand maybe 4 times a year or something. This is something that's a pain in the ass to do with tar (involving find-based scripts to figure out which files have been modified), but seems ideally suited for dump. I know dump uses inodes, but as for tar I don't even know if it's handling my hard links properly or not. How can I do this with the ft driver? Also, dump seems geared only to whole filesystems. Well for my FreeBSD system, I really don't want to backup /usr/src, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, etc etc. In fact, I've tried to structure my directory system so that all my local stuff is in /usr/users, /usr/local, and /etc. Does dump really require me to put all of this in a separate filesystem? I've got a slow net connection, so it would be really neat to save the release tarballs along with /usr/local and /usr/users in 4 separate volumes on one tape, then do incremental backups of my local stuff only. Finally, I *am* able to use dump if I pipe it through ft, eg % dump -u0f - / | ft but ft just hangs if I try it for my /usr partition (strangely enough it works for a secondary partition I have that's really small). I saw someone post this same problem on 4/25 (psonnek@skypoint.com if you're reading this), but I never saw an answer posted. Is dump (or Amanda which won't work if dump doesn't) really the answer to my floppy-tape woes? Or should I concentrate my time on writing my own incremental tar scripts? -- /----------------------------------------------------------------------------\ | Raymond L. Gilbert | "...the present rule in computing the circle's | | pi@indiana.edu | area is entirely wrong..." | | IUB Dept. of Physics | - Bill No. 246, Indiana State Legislature, 1897| \----------------------------------------------------------------------------/