Re: Star or gnu cpio, or Something Else?

From: Larry Lindstrom (larryl_at_aracnet.com)
Date: 06/19/03 

Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 22:37:51 GMT

Michael Laajanen wrote:
>
> HI,
>
> Larry Lindstrom wrote:
> > Hi Experts:
> >
> > Sorry, I misspelled this newsgroup's name when
> > trying to cross post from the X86 group.
> >
> > I discovered a month ago that cpio, which I've
> > been using for years, no longer extracts files I've
> > archived. It suddenly complains about the inode
> > value being too large, and fails to recover.
> I think I have read somwhere that cpio is more or less on it's way out.
>
> >
> > Fortunately, I also perform full system backups
> > using ufsdump, and nothing major is lost. But my
> > next account backup was with tar.
> >
> > I think it sucks severely that Solaris is being
> > shipped with unreliable backup utilities. These
> > facilities are too important. Anybody with me?
> ofcourse, but what sucks?
>
> >
> > I used that tar tape to recover my account today,
> > and got the following error shortly after starting:
> >
> > tar: directory checksum error
> First, don't use SUN tar due to limitations in PATH depth, second stick
> to one tar, like GNU tar then on all platforms.

   Yep, I haven't used Sun's tar for a long time. I've
been using gnu tar.

> > I used cpio on my Solaris PC to back up my account
> > on an NFS mounted Linux system, without a tape of its
> > own. This was when I still trusted cpio. Recovery
> > with cpio, of course, failed. I really needed the
> > contents of that tape, and found that I could recover
> > that tape's files with gnu cpio.
> >
> > The most important question I have is, can I trust
> > ufsdump? I use Andrew Gabriel's great utilities that
> > rely on ufsdump and ufsrestore.
> I like and have not had any problems with ufsdump, I do ufsdump from
> disk to disk for daily backup, very nice although I would like to have
> completion in ufsrestore :)

   What do you mean by "completion"?

   Have you looked at Andrew's utility? It's sweet. I
low level my drives and start Solaris from the CD in single
user mode. Andrew's script formats and partitions the
drives as they were. 15 minutes after booting the tape is
turning and files are being recovered.

   He built it for X86, you might check with him if you
want to use it with SPARC.

   I've made minor mods so it will recover all my filesystems
with no user intervention.

> But you can not do verify on a live system, thats the problem so you
> need to use fssnap first to frezze the filesystem onto a temp disk, then
> ufsdump from that place.

   Yea, system backup and recovery are a single user mode
operation. Something I can do on my own workstation. I
backup my account on a live system.

> > I want something portable between Solaris and Linux
> > to recover my account. What do you folks use to backup
> > your user accounts to tape?
>
> gtar :)

   Yea, but that's what bit me.

   Computers have hiccups. This is the first time I used
gnu tar, instead of cpio, for my account backup. And I
got hit. It may be that gnu tar is fine, and I'll never
have this problem again. But I think it's worth seeing
what others are using.

   Thanks for your advice.

                                                   Larry

Relevant Pages

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