Forcing good backup procedures

[Chip Rosenthal]

In article <867 at zeusa.UUCP> hendrik at zeusa.UUCP (Hendrik Vermooten) writes:
>A customer of mine has about 20 XENIX sites, with *low* level operators.
>Making backups is a problem [...] What I'm looking for is some
>program/script/anything that will check if the correctly labled tape [...]

You've got a bigger problem than getting backups made - you need to fix
an attitude problem.  I would recommend a letter to the manager of the
facility.  I do not suggest that this letter beat them up over bad
practices, but rather suggest a positive course of action and clearly
explain the benefits to be obtained.  If possible, these benefits should
be in terms of cold, hard cash.

For example, I've got an analogous situation with one client.  They were
very begrudging over my recommendation to start using passwords.  They
still don't have a root password.  Just two weeks ago, they went out and
bought another terminal because the (theoretical) system administrator
wanted "to do data entry while generating reports."  This is on a SCO
XENIX system, which has multiscreen capability (i.e. the equivalent 12
tty's on the console).  She didn't know about that.  Just this week, they
ran out of disk space because nobody watches the df's.

The price they've paid this last month on unnecessary equipment and lost
productivity would more than pay for two people to attend a XENIX training
class.  If I can convince them to send just one person, they win.

Maybe training classes aren't a possibility for you.  In this case, check
out other alternatives.  Check out the instructional videotapes and other
programs.  Your challenge is to motivate (at least) one person at this
site to get responsible for these machines.  You aren't going to cram
anything down their throats they don't want - work on making them want
it.

I strongly advise you to address the attitude problem.  A tape labelling
program would indeed be a handy tool, but that's going after the symptoms.
Unless you fix the real problem, clients like this can become lots of
headache and little reward.

-- 
Chip Rosenthal  <chip at chinacat.Unicom.COM>
Unicom Systems Development, 512-482-8260 
Our motto is:  We never say, "But it works with DOS."