Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 15:59:17 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: freebsd-questions-local@be-well.ilk.org (Lowell Gilbert) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What's the easiest way to do a backup and verify? Message-ID: <200503072059.j27KxHl12103@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <44psybgplk.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> from "Lowell Gilbert" at Mar 07, 2005 03:36:55 PM
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> > Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr> writes: > Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony@wanadoo.fr> writes: > > > Jerry McAllister writes: > > > > > Actually, if used frequently for backups - such as every day, DAT is > > > notoriously prone to failure. > > > > I've heard this for years, but I've never encountered it, on my own > > systems or on any others. My drives are HP SureStore SCSI drives. > > Currently I have BASF tapes, and they've gone through about 40 cycles. > > I take backups every few days, or whenever there are large changes to > > the data on the server (most of the time the only changes are log files > > and things like that). > > > > > The only real thing you can do is to read back the tape and look > > > for a couple of files with fairly high inode numbers for each file > > > system dumped. If you can read them, you can assume the tape > > > is readable. > > > > I'm surprised there isn't just some way of reading the tape and doing a > > few simple sanity checks on the data (without comparing it to anything). > > A drive or tape error would likely show on such checks. > > Listing the archive contents might be what you're looking for, then... That sounds good, but... Unfortunately, I have been able to look at the dump index but not read anything past that many times. Or have been able to read a low inode file but not get a higher inode file. Remember that the files are written on the dump in inode order. That is why I suggested trying to read a couple of high inode files - or maybe a few spaced out over the inode range that was dumped. Dump/restore are good utilities, but have some glaring holes in what they can do. ////jerry > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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