So I recently installed an Overland Arcvault 12 tape library on a server to back up /var/log/ and /home. The server is an out-of-box RHEL 5 install, with all packages selected, in an isolated lan, with no package updates. Also, this is a live server that cannot be brought down for backups, and some files may be actively in use during the dump - just gotta live with it. Since I know EL5 and C5 are the same, and the level of support I get from RH is actually less effective and slower than resources such as this list, I'm looking here, first. Up to this point I was backing up to a USB-mounted external 1 TB hard drive. I was using a script containing: /sbin/dump -0v -z2 -f /media/usb_drive/dump0 /home I played with restore on that, and it tested fine. For the tape, I thought it would be nice to add /var/log (should have done it before, but didn't think of it...) Trying to adapt the knowledge to a tape library... /sbin/dump -0 -v -z2 -f /dev/nst0 /var/log /sbin/dump -0u -v -z2 -f /dev/nst0 /home I have a cron job that dumps the results to /var/log/dump.log, and a review of the log file claims all went well. Now for the restore... I just tried playing with different options of restore, but could not successfully restore anything. I ensured I was in a scratch area so as to hopefully not overwrite current files. What is the proper procedure for dumping and restoring now? Should I be dumping to /dev/nst0/dump? What restore commands would I use to recall a file? I'd like to keep things as simple as possible - people have suggested legato and amanda, but for now, I would think/hope dump and restore would work. Thanks. Scott
On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 at 10:16am, Scott Ehrlich wrote> So I recently installed an Overland Arcvault 12 tape library on a server toWhat kind of tape drive is in there?> I was using a script containing: > > /sbin/dump -0v -z2 -f /media/usb_drive/dump0 /home > > I played with restore on that, and it tested fine. > > For the tape, I thought it would be nice to add /var/log (should have done it > before, but didn't think of it...)Is /var/log its own filesystem? dump/restore is designed to work on filesystems, not directories. IIRC (I haven't used dump/restore in a while), full dumps will work OK (with some complaining) but incrementals won't work at all.> Trying to adapt the knowledge to a tape library... > > /sbin/dump -0 -v -z2 -f /dev/nst0 /var/log > /sbin/dump -0u -v -z2 -f /dev/nst0 /homeDepending on what tape drive you have and whether or not hardware compression is enabled, you may want to lose the -z. You may want to anyway to save yourself the cycles.> I have a cron job that dumps the results to /var/log/dump.log, and a review > of the log file claims all went well. Now for the restore... > > I just tried playing with different options of restore, but could not > successfully restore anything. I ensured I was in a scratch area so as to > hopefully not overwrite current files.Erm, what options did you try, and what were the results? Did you ensure the tape was positioned properly?> I'd like to keep things as simple as possible - people have suggested legato > and amanda, but for now, I would think/hope dump and restore would work.I'm a big fan and long-time user of amanda, but it's appropriateness here depends on your needs (which you haven't fully spelled out). -- Joshua Baker-LePain QB3 Shared Cluster Sysadmin UCSF
Scott Ehrlich wrote:> So I recently installed an Overland Arcvault 12 tape library on a server > to back up /var/log/ and /home.[...]> Trying to adapt the knowledge to a tape library... > > /sbin/dump -0 -v -z2 -f /dev/nst0 /var/log > /sbin/dump -0u -v -z2 -f /dev/nst0 /home > > I have a cron job that dumps the results to /var/log/dump.log, and a > review of the log file claims all went well. Now for the restore... > > I just tried playing with different options of restore, but could not > successfully restore anything. I ensured I was in a scratch area so as > to hopefully not overwrite current files. > > What is the proper procedure for dumping and restoring now? Should I be > dumping to /dev/nst0/dump? What restore commands would I use to > recall a file? > > I'd like to keep things as simple as possible - people have suggested > legato and amanda, but for now, I would think/hope dump and restore > would work.First you need to determine if your problem is with dump or the tape drive. Dump tends to be unhappy if the filesystem changes during the run, so you might be better off using tar. Also, some tape drives are picky about the block size used in writing and reading. You can use the mt command to check/set the block size for the tape, and both dump and tar have block size options that you can set to match. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell at gmail.com