On Nov 4,  2:32am, Matthew Jacob wrote:
} 
} > Your point is taken, and I don't regard myself as having nixed your idea
} > for implementing something else.  Indeed, I believe I took issue, as with
} > Mike Cheponis' "get rid of man pages as we know them" thread, with the
} > notion of getting rid of a known, well-working approach.
} > 
} > To reference a previous thread, man works pretty well.
} > To reference the current thread, dump works pretty well.
} 
} To a first approximation, dump does work reasonably well for small backup
} requirements (and even smaller restore requirements). I myself don't use it

     With the addition of some scripting, I would say that dump works
reasonably well for anything short of enterprise level backup
requirements.  Restoral times are determined by the filesystem being
used, although it can be sped up by temporaily mounting the filesystem
async, and using modern fast hard drives and interfaces.

} that much- I haven't for years (. This is because *I'm* comfortable with
} NetWorker which allows me, on a day to day basis, to recover *this* file which
} I've just mistakenly removed (instead of having to do the whole restore -i
} goop, find the tape, load it in, etc..).

     "find the tape, load it in, etc." is required regardless of the
backup process used.  Good record keeping (automated or manual) makes
this process relatively painless.  Also, if you know the exact file
that you want to recover, then you can use '-x' which is faster.  If
you don't know the filename, then it doesn't really matter, since the
index is kept at the beginning of the "tape" and can be read quite
quickly.

} > To assume that the individual will be able to just go out and buy,
} > off the shelf, for a reasonable price, a new-fangled cutting-edge removable
} > backup medium solution is as folly as some of the other "let's-abandon-the-

     You can buy a 50G (native) QIC drive for about $2400 CDN, with
media costing about $125 CDN.  This may sound expensive, but it is
really cheap compared to AIT and DLT (neither of which can go beyond
35G).  DDS4 is probably the cheapest, but it doesn't have the capacity
given that it maxes out at 20G.  On the lower end, Travan drives and
media are dirt cheap (not to mention slow and not nearly as reliable).

} > lately.  You'll pardon me if I note that that particular approach is
} > kind of counter to what is, to me, one of NetBSD's key factors.

     Nah, I agree with you, here.

} > (Not to mention that I, as an owner of a piece of kind-o-slow kind-o-
} > obsolete hardware with only a (broken) EXB-8200 (remember the one that
} > won't do EOF marks properly) as a backup device have a vested interest

     I always considered Exabyte stuff to be junk and couldn't care
less about them.

} This isn't a 'backup hardware' issue. You have the hardware you have. It's not
} even close to impedance matched to the 18GB disks that you can buy at
} clearance prices on the Web now (which is why tape backup, per se, is somehwat
} problematic now even for the brand new tape drives you can buy- I mean the
} default storage size for disks that you can buy soon will require you to have
} a changer for all but *the* most expensive tape media). But working with a

     This doesn't excuse not doing backups.

}-- End of excerpt from Matthew Jacob