> Matthew Jacob writes:
> > There is nothing in my suggesting that NDMP might be useful which would
> > require any hardware changes. This is a data management protcol- not something
> > put out by Exabyte to sell more changers.
> 
> Matt,
> 	you have my support if you want to provide ndmp support in NetBSD. 
> This should allow easier use of products such as Veritas NetBackup,
> Legato Networker, and Workstation Solutions Quick Restore to backup
> NetBSD boxes without the need to have a NetBSD specific client (which
> is what these products traditionally had to do, right?)

This is exactly right. Rather than keep on struggling with the clients (or
even the servers) for these packages, it would be *sooooooo* much better to
speak NDMP for both the DATA and the TAPE server case. I really don't get much
joy out of supporting NetWorker, but I sure am not gonna use dump/restore.

> 
> For the others: Supporting NDMP is orthogonal to dump; it's more a
> control protocol in which software can control backup processes, tape
> drives and tape libraries. IIRC, the backup software on admin host `a'
> can (for example) ask host `d' to send a backup stream to host `t', and
> on the control stream containing the filenames back to host `a'.
> There's nothing stopping the backup stream from host `a' being a
> native format like dump, and in fact, that's what NetApp does (one of
> the vendors who started NDMP). See http://www.ndmp.org for more info.


-matt