From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Nov 13 17:33: 6 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from post.mail.nl.demon.net (post-10.mail.nl.demon.net [194.159.73.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4586937B417 for ; Tue, 13 Nov 2001 17:33:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from [212.238.77.116] (helo=buffy.raggedclown.net) by post.mail.nl.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 163ovD-0001gS-00 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Wed, 14 Nov 2001 01:33:00 +0000 Received: by tanya.raggedclown.net (Postfix on SuSE Linux 7.3 (i386), from userid 500) id 7AE9E10F3; Wed, 14 Nov 2001 02:17:51 +0100 (CET) Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 02:17:51 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Tape Back Up and Cron????? Message-ID: <20011114021751.A1084@raggedclown.net> References: <20011113224823.53372.qmail@web11801.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20011113224823.53372.qmail@web11801.mail.yahoo.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.22.1i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 02:48:23PM -0800, Bernie Johnson wrote: > I have a small dilema, I have got tostart backing up a > few directories every night to a DDS3 tape drive. > Oh you do not have to synchronise all of this with cron ! Create a shell script to do perform each of the steps in the required order and have cron start the script at the required time. The output messages from the job will be mailed to root (or root's alias) and you can re-direct any output/errors to a log file as well. Dealing with the question of whether the resulting output is too big too fit on the tape is slightly trickier. To do this you will need to know the capacity available on the tape and the sizes of the resulting output files, and do a little calculation - but that can be scripted as well. I suppose it is not really what you are asking about, but backing up the whole of /usr, every night seems a bit keen. 99.99% of it probably doesn't change from day to day on most systems I would guess. Have you (or they) considered an incremental/differential backup strategy instead ? All of the tools required for this kind of thing are available. Of course it depends on what you're system is used for. An average bear like me would consider a full-backup of volatile files systems such as /home and /var to be a good idea and an incremental backup of the rest. Btw, whatevr you do don't forget to test that a restore procedure will work as well ! This is oft-forgot. -- Regards Cliff To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message