How big will tonight's dump be

[David Steffens]

olling at tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (Cliff Olling) asks:
> Is there a better way to determine dump size than dumping to /dev/null
> before doing the real thing?

The following is a fragment of a Bourne shell script that I use to
estimate dump sizes on a 4/280 running SunOS4.0.0.  It assumes the
following shell variables have been set appropriately:

	LEVEL	the dump level to be estimated
	DENS	tape density in bits per inch ("d" argument for dump)
	SIZE	tape length in feet ("s" argument for dump)
	FILSYS	the file system to be estimated

echo yes | /etc/dump ${LEVEL}fds /dev/null $DENS $SIZE $FILSYS 2>&1 | (
	: this delay guarantees "dump" will appear in the "ps" listing
	sleep 2
	set `ps | grep " dump" | grep -v grep`
	DUMP_PID=$1
	while read LINE
	do
		echo $LINE

		set $LINE
		case $2 in
		estimated)
			kill -INT $DUMP_PID
			break
			;;
		*)
			continue
			;;
		esac
	done
)
----
{harvard,mit-eddie,think}!eplunix!das		David Allan Steffens
243 Charles St., Boston, MA 02114		Eaton-Peabody Laboratory
(617) 573-3748					Mass. Eye & Ear Infirmary