That helps a lot, thanks!

One last question, is the data to the file/tape compressed?

jam

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Frederick Bruckman" <fb@enteract.com>
To: "John Maier" <jmaier@midamerica.net>
Cc: <netbsd-users@netbsd.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 2:04 PM
Subject: Re: Tape Backups -- tar vs. dump


> On Tue, 2 Jan 2001, John Maier wrote:
> 
> > With dump, (if I read the man page correctly) I can only backup one
> > device-partition per tape, but that incremental backup looks sweet.
> 
> Per "file" (tape "file"), actually. So if you use "-f /dev/nrst0" (or
> leave it off -- nrst0 is the default device), you can backup several
> partitions at once by listing them all on the command line. For the
> restore, you use the "-s" argument to choose which "file" to restore.
> 
> > > dump -0u -L `date '+%m/%d/%G'` -f /dev/rst0 /
> 
> E.g:
> 
>   dump -0u -B 20000000 / /usr /home; eject tape
> 
> Then, to sanity test your backup, reinsert tape
> 
>   cd /tmp; restore -i -s 3
> 
> and select a file from /home, etc. Some admins don't trust the
> "no-rewind" tape device, and say they'd rather use three tapes to
> backup three partitions. That's because if anyone ejects the tape
> between backups, game over; the next backup is going to the beginning.
> For my money, it's safe enough if you lay them down all at once, as
> above, but it depends an your needs.
> 
> -- 
> 
> Frederick
> 
>