From: acook@athena.mit.edu (Andrew R Cook) Subject: Re: [Q] Backups under Linux Date: 28 Jul 1993 04:27:06 GMT
I know this may be a bit low-brow, but I back up my Linux stuff using a
QIC-80 tape drive from DOS. THis really works quite well, though perhaps
not very slick. But considering how cheap QIC-80 drives are, and how
expensive the alternatives are (in tapes if not the drives themselves),
it seems like a good way to go, at least until the QIC-80 superheroes
firgure it all out (which I hope they eventually do - Thanks guys!).
For those of you who don't know how to do this, it is really simple:
1) Free up sufficient disk space on a DOS partition.
2) Mount the DOS partition.
3) Tar your filesystem (I prefer to restrict tar from crossing fs boundaries),
and pipe the output through compress or gzip (better) into a file
on your dos partition.
ie/ tar -clf - / | gzip -9 > /dos/root.taz
4) Do this for all of your Linux partitions.
5) Then from DOS, use your favorite backup program to put the file on tape.
Be sure to use the verify option, as files this big will invariably
have an error or two in them when first written to the tape :-).
Also, shut off any file compression the program does as it will
only may the file grow ...
6) To restore a full fs, just do the reverse :
ie/ zcat /dos/root.taz | tar -xf -
or only specify the files you need.
There are many variations on this theme, but I like this approach as it is
simple. Someday QIC-80 drivers will be available, and we can do this all
more simply with dump and restore, but for now this works fine.
Andy Cook
acook@athena.mit.edu