At 22:42 Uhr +0200 19.7.2000, Matthew Jacob wrote:
>> Dump/Restore will not drop into retirement unless there's a free replacement
>> for it [...]
>
>I think that neither the dump format nor the dump/restore program set itself
>is anything close to adequate for the amount of storage out there. I shouldn't
>have said "retired" I suppose- but I don't see trying to continually update
>it.

Maybe you should state first what you sees as "adequate" and "amount of
storate out there"? Given the sore state of NetBSD's tape support, I don't
really see NetBSD used as a server in "really large installations". And you
still have not come up with even a hint at an alternative.
>
>There is a growing consensus in a number or areas that tape backup is
>completly pointless anyhow by now.

Uhh.. And the alternative would be?!

>> - Amanda does not handle spanning multiple volumes.
>
>Amanda is irretrievably broken, and really counts as a pre-Perl/pre-TCL/TK
>backup script despatcher.
>
>> This leaves us with dump/restore and various (possibly interactive) scripts.
>
>Because of brokenness in Amanda && proprietariness in Legato, etc., neither
>are appropriate for *BSD unless you, as sysadmin, are willing to use them as
>part of a larger environment or like breakage. It is the latter situation
>which caused me to move my ftp site to a 384Kbit DSL because of all the Legato
>client downloads. Saying that the Legato/propietary solution is 'all bad'
>(which you and others within NetBSD have said before) is a bit of 'head in
>sand'.

Well...

Given how well Amanda with its unique set of features works for me on a
small scale (currently four machines with 30+ GB disk space), I challenge
you on that. "Irretrievably broken" is FUD as long as you fail to come up
with the slightest proof.

I evaluated a few packages about a year ago (ARCserve, Legato, Arkeia,
Retrospect 5) and about the only thing that stopped me from using Amanda
for the whole shop is its lack of NT/Macintosh client support (no, samba
does not count -- registry, ACLs). Second best (again, for my situation --
~20 boxes) would have been Retrospect. Legato -- no, thank you.  The
marketroid who sent us the demo license also wanted to send us an on-site
consultant; we'd never get anywhere with Legato otherwise, according to his
words...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Amanda is the only C/S backup system that uses
a server-side holding disk to keep highspeed tape drives streaming. And,
no, multiplexing data streams from multiple clients is not a solution
unless you want to settle on proprietary data formats. Being able to pop in
any NetBSD boot disk and access an Amanda tape gives me a warm fuzzy
feeling.

>But I agree it's not optimal- which is why I am trying to schedule time to
>implement NDMP which, as a public and open standard that has some substantial
>support in Veritas, Legato and NetApp proprietary backup programs, might
>provide an adult and modern backup toolset that can assist *BSD to work in the
>commercial space (and thus be a selling point- I mean, really, when you talk
>to most enterprise sites and say, "*BSD? Data managment and backup? Uh, tar,
>cpio, dump.....").

Still miles ahead of the backup mess on the "industry standard" OS...

> But we may not agree on
>what works and what doesn't.

Yep. Still, for teh sake of discussion, you might want to state your
preconditions and let us see whether they are representative (for NetBSD)
in any way.

	hauke


--
"It's never straight up and down"     (DEVO)