Why idle backups?? (was Re: Looking for shell script for backup on BSD 4.3)

[Robert Perlberg]

In article <1990Oct24.210312.3271 at cubmol.bio.columbia.edu>, ping at cubmol.bio.columbia.edu (Shiping Zhang) writes:
> In article <32749 at sparkyfs.istc.sri.com> zwicky at quetzalcoatl.erg.sri.com.UUCP (Elizabeth Zwicky) writes:
> >
> >Purdue modified dump if at all possible, and you should give serious
> >thought to running level 0s in single-user; you can do this
> >automatically in the middle of the night by using the same sort of
>  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >trick that fastboot uses, creating a magic file that the rc files
> >look for in the boot process to tell them to do backups.
> >
> 
> I have seen this suggestion more than once on this news group.
> But I don't know how. One question I have is about the tape changes.
> Certainly one tape is not enough for a zero level backup.
> How to get away with this problem?  Thanks for any enlightenment.
> 
> -ping

Well, if you really have to change tapes, you're probably out of luck.
I'm assuming that you are using 6250 BPI 1/2" tape.  I don't know what
kind of machine you are using, but you might be able to get an 8mm tape
drive for it.  An 8mm drive can store about 2.3 Gigabytes on one tape.
We have a network with 2 Sun servers with 1 Gig of disk each both of
which get backed up to one 8mm tape.  If one 8mm tape is not big enough
for you, there is a company which sells an 8mm "jukebox" -- an 8mm
drive with a carousel which allows a number of 8mm tapes to be changed
automatically.

Robert Perlberg
Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., New York
{murphy | philabs | chuo}!step!perl
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