Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] Backing up unix with Retrospect on a mac...
From: Adrian Howard (adrianh@victoriareal.co.uk)
Date: Tue Oct 13 1998 - 06:48:54 EDT
At 3:25 am +0100 13/10/98, Jesse Reynolds wrote:
>Hi there
>
>does anyone use Retrospect on a Mac to backup their unix machine via
>appleshare? Have you run into any problems - does it work well?
>
>What I'm planning to do is mount my unix machine at root level read only
>and backup the whole thing in one go once a day. However, it seems a
>difficult thing to create a user that has access to read everything on the
>server without write permission everywhere as well.... any ideas how i'd do
>that?
>
>(Solaris 2.5.1, asun netatalk)
>
>cheers
>
>jesse
This can work well in some instances (for example when you are backing up
directories/partitions which are just used by atalk users). However, if you
are planning to back up UNIX files three problems you are going to have to
consider:
1) Many UNIXes have longer filenames than the Mac can cope with
2) You lose the file permissions and user/group IDs
3) Dealing with "special" characters (/, ., :, etc.) on Macs/Unix can be a
pain...
(it's also trez slow unless you're using atalk via TCP/IP.... but everybody
is these days :-)
As an alternative to directly mounting a directory we tar & gzip important
directories from the UNIX boxes into a special directory which we than
backup nightly (when our fardling DAT drive is working that is --- roll on
that DLT order :-).
Doing this has the advantages of
o keeping full/accurate filenames
o keeping permissions and UIDs
.... disadvantages
o recover involves UNIX command line stuff (not a major deal for us,
but might be for some people)
o wastes a lot of disk space (again, not a big issue for us)
o backups not incremental (hence, you waste a lot of tape --- this
is a
pain. We backup about 300Meg nightly when it would probably be less
than a meg if it was incremental).
A more sensible option would be to use dump (or something similar) to setup
an incremental regime... however we've never had the spare time to sort
this out...
Another possibility, which I have not looked into at all, is the new backup
via FTP which the new Retrospect has. I don't know off the top of my head
if it allows FTP as a source as well as a target --- but it may offer
another route.
Now.... if only Retrospect would do a Linux backup client I would be trez
happy :-)
I would be intrested if anybody else has alternate solutions.
Cheers,
Adrian
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