I'm still pretty new to Linux. I have a Samba server up and running and need to install tape backup before I can setup our in-house users on the server. Any suggestions on where to get started. I browsed the Suse documentation and didn't find anything on tape backup. I also checked YAST and didn't anything on setting up a tape drive or installing tape backup software. Any suggestions on tape drives and software would be appreciated. Matt
Matt Stamm wrote:
I'm still pretty new to Linux. I have a Samba server up and running and need to install tape backup before I can setup our in-house users on the server. Any suggestions on where to get started. I browsed the Suse documentation and didn't find anything on tape backup. I also checked YAST and didn't anything on setting up a tape drive or installing tape backup software.
Any suggestions on tape drives and software would be appreciated.
Matt
I've been using a product called BRU for years. RedHat shipped a version of it with their distro back in the 5.x days. I've since purchased the product and use it for backups of all my machines. That being said, there is no reason you can't simply use tar or any other backup application to handle what you need to do. In fact, I'm sure there are probably better applications out there today. Something with a backup database perhaps. As much as BRU and tar do the job, it does take about an hour to restore a file here. The time is required because BRU has to search through the tape session looking for the file. Backing up your system in multiple "sessions" - ie one for /usr, another for /etc, another for /home, another for /var - could speed up this process if you remember which session is for which directory structure. Pretty simple if you use a script for backups which we all *should* do. Familiarize yourself with a utility called "mt" (magnetic tape). It's the utility used to rewind, forward, eject, retention, etc. tape media and it is a console utility. As for drives, I use a Seagate DDS4 tape drive connected to an Adaptec 29160 SCSI controller. This is somewhat high end though, although not as high end as a DLT, SDLT, etc. You could just as easily use an older DDS3 or even DDS2 drive. I'd avoid the IDE or floppy controller based drives. I've just had too many problems with these over the years. Of course you could go with other methods of backup such as RAID 1 mirroring, CD-RW media, or ftp'ing data to another machine. In some scenarios these work just fine. It just depends on your environment, budget, and requirements. -- John LeMay KC2KTH Senior Enterprise Consultant NJMC | http://www.njmc.com | Phone 732-557-4848 Specializing in Microsoft and Unix based solutions
On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, John LeMay wrote:
Matt Stamm wrote:
Any suggestions on tape drives and software would be appreciated. Matt Of course you could go with other methods of backup such as RAID 1 mirroring, CD-RW media, or ftp'ing data to another machine. In some scenarios these work just fine. It just depends on your environment, budget, and requirements.
Oh my god, do I feel 'qualified' to opine here. I handle a Linux, three HP and one Solaris machine here. I shall share all the cases that we have handled so far. 1. Backup on tape drives. Existings drives are DDS-1. You know, total native capacity equal to 2 GB. On HP we used to use SAM and control through it. And similar tools on Solaris. Writing to tapes was painful - because of required intervention. We had to manually change the cassettes. :-( 2. Mirroring lets you have a machine up all the time, in case a drive fails. The data is backed up in a dynamic fashion, I mean, it is always available to you at run time. Current state of the system would be backed up. I am not sure whether you can keep chanding mirrored disks, to keep a backup. 3. What I did here - is as follows. As we have a LAN here, all the machines here shutdown all applications, logout all users at 1:oo am, disable further logins and use their native applications for creating backups. On HP, we use fbackup. On linux we use tar. Each have their own options of creating backup archives. Now, all these archives are written to another cheap PC's IDE hdd over NFS. So there is one PC - which springs into heavy action at night, taking inputs from all machines. Network can take this load, and so can this PC. So simultaneous backup of some 5 machines finishes in three hours. After the backups finish, the logins are enabled again, applications are started, databases are started and things continue in the morning as if nothing happened. We take a differential backup daily and a full backup weekly. Of course, the process is fully automated. 4. An even better way to do backups would be to use dd command with disks of exactly the same geometry. Disk-A to be backed up on it's twin Disk-AA. Disk B on Disk BB and so on. This can be automatic too - and tuned to your hardware for speed [by altering block size in ibs/obs for dd]. If one disk goes bad, you can replace it with another - without hassle. But this is not archival of files. It is restoration in case of hardware failure. -- Rohit +9122 5692 2101 D2,floor-3,Chandivali : SDE : TLSI : 9821394599@bplmobile.com The information below is compulsorily added for non-mahindrabt recepients. ********************************************************* Disclaimer This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message and are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. ********************************************************* Visit us at http://www.mahindrabt.com
On Thursday 06 February 2003 01:56, John LeMay wrote:
That being said, there is no reason you can't simply use tar or any other backup application to handle what you need to do. In fact, I'm sure there are probably better applications out there today. Something with a backup database perhaps. As much as BRU and tar do the job, it does take about an hour to restore a file here. The time is required because BRU has to search through the tape session looking for the file.
Have you ever looked at `dds2tar'? It is included in SuSE and it allows you to restore a single file from tape by using the fast seek command of DAT tape drives. It works great for me (HP35470A DDS-1 drive); I don't know wheter it'll work for you (DDS-4). Paul.
On Thursday 06 February 2003 5:13 am, Paul Uiterlinden wrote:
On Thursday 06 February 2003 01:56, John LeMay wrote:
That being said, there is no reason you can't simply use tar or any other backup application to handle what you need to do. In fact, I'm sure there are probably better applications out there today. Something with a backup database perhaps. As much as BRU and tar do the job, it does take about an hour to restore a file here. The time is required because BRU has to search through the tape session looking for the file.
Have you ever looked at `dds2tar'? It is included in SuSE and it allows you to restore a single file from tape by using the fast seek command of DAT tape drives. It works great for me (HP35470A DDS-1 drive); I don't know wheter it'll work for you (DDS-4).
Paul.
In order to use QFA (quick file access) of a DDS drive, someone has to know the 'location' of the file on tape. Where does dds2tar get this info? -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 02/06/03 09:05 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ "Take from me the hope that I can change the future and you will send me mad." - Israel Zangwill
On Thursday 06 February 2003 15:06, Bruce Marshall wrote:
On Thursday 06 February 2003 5:13 am, Paul Uiterlinden wrote:
Have you ever looked at `dds2tar'? It is included in SuSE and it allows you to restore a single file from tape by using the fast seek command of DAT tape drives. It works great for me (HP35470A DDS-1 drive); I don't know wheter it'll work for you (DDS-4).
Paul.
In order to use QFA (quick file access) of a DDS drive, someone has to know the 'location' of the file on tape. Where does dds2tar get this info?
You patch and compile tar so that it will take an extra argument, telling tar to create a file containing filenames and blocknumbers. There is also a possibility of creating this index file afterwards (with dds2index), but once you have patched tar you'll never need that. It is this index file that dds2tar uses to see where it has to seek to. This is great if you want to restore a few files. For a complete restore you don't need the index file. You can use an unpatched version of tar for that. This allows you to restore the complete system just using the SuSE boot CD (been there, done that). I don't think the patch for tar is included in the SuSE rpms. The URL mentioned in /usr/share/doc/packages/dds2tar/README is remarkably out of date. The URL that I know of where you can find the complete tar-ball, including the patch, is: http://www.eulesoft.de/ Paul.
Try Arkeia -- http://www.arkeia.com It's won A++++++ awards every time it's reviewed, and it's got a "lite" version for Free! (Runs on a Linux server and can handle 2 clients) Very schweet! I've used it already. The Pro version is extremely buff! :D HTH, TLO On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 17:23, Matt Stamm wrote:
I'm still pretty new to Linux. I have a Samba server up and running and need to install tape backup before I can setup our in-house users on the server. Any suggestions on where to get started. I browsed the Suse documentation and didn't find anything on tape backup. I also checked YAST and didn't anything on setting up a tape drive or installing tape backup software.
Any suggestions on tape drives and software would be appreciated.
Matt -- Travis
On Wednesday 05 February 2003 09:55 pm, Travis Owens wrote:
Try Arkeia -- http://www.arkeia.com It's won A++++++ awards every time it's reviewed,
Yeah, A++++ reviews till you need to restore from a crash. Then you are Out of Luck unless you have some OTHER backup to restore the tape catelog from. The sorry truth is that arkeia does not store catelogs on the tape and can not recreate a catelog from its own tape, so after a hard disk failure you are screwed. Its good for backups and restoring things users accidentally delete, but as a disaster recovery its useless. Try BRU. At least it can rebuild a catelog from its own tape. -- _________________________________________________ John Andersen / Juneau Alaska
Anybody is using "taper"? is it good? can we backup
the whole "/home" and restore it flawless?
--- John Andersen
On Wednesday 05 February 2003 09:55 pm, Travis Owens wrote:
Try Arkeia -- http://www.arkeia.com It's won A++++++ awards every time it's reviewed,
Yeah, A++++ reviews till you need to restore from a crash. Then you are Out of Luck unless you have some OTHER backup to restore the tape catelog from.
The sorry truth is that arkeia does not store catelogs on the tape and can not recreate a catelog from its own tape, so after a hard disk failure you are screwed.
Its good for backups and restoring things users accidentally delete, but as a disaster recovery its useless.
Try BRU. At least it can rebuild a catelog from its own tape.
-- _________________________________________________
John Andersen / Juneau Alaska
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On Thursday 06 February 2003 01:01, John Andersen wrote:
On Wednesday 05 February 2003 09:55 pm, Travis Owens wrote:
Try Arkeia -- http://www.arkeia.com It's won A++++++ awards every time it's reviewed,
Yeah, A++++ reviews till you need to restore from a crash. Then you are Out of Luck unless you have some OTHER backup to restore the tape catelog from. [snip]
This is not true. The tape cataloge can be restored from the tapes themselves. I have used Arkeia for at least 5 years. Had great experiences using it. It is a great product. I used it at Caldera where I was a system admin/Software Engineer (infact, I worked with several of the German engineers that now work for SuSE). I tranined Caldera's IT deparment on Arkeia's use and SCO now uses it for company-wide backup. VTI, an SCO spin-off company uses it to backup their company infrastructure. I used it at the University of Utah while I was a system administrator there. I convinced the University of Utah's Center for High Performance Computing to use it and they have now for the last 5 years for their Beowolf cluster (configuration and such) backup as well as workstations and other UNIX server backup. They backup several servers and workstations of varying OS types. It has worked great for them over the years. Like any industrial strength product, there is a _lot_ to know about Arkeia but you can start using it without knowing everything about it. It is very powerful and flexable. It supports encrypted transfer of data between clients and the server, simultainious streaming from several clients. It is strait out, the fastest client-server backup product I have used on Linux. The header of each tape containes the C-source for a command line restore tool. This is also included in the software. There is a command line tool for extracting/restoring the tape index from a set of tapes. I have personaly used that tool and know that it works. A downside is that in versions < 5, the tape index database is filesystem based. Three files are created for each file that gets backed up. In my case at Caldera, I was backing up almost 1.5 Terrabytes of data in a full backup. Three files for every one that I backed up makes a machine very slow just for database access. One should tripple the ammounts of inodes on the partition used for the database. If lost, the database also takes time to restore so my advice is to copy/tar the index to another machine after each backup. There is better handling of the database in the latest version from what I understand. There are some tricks to make dealing with the database better. For example, people have created a file, mkfs.whatever (usualy riser or ext3) on the file and moutned it as a loopback deviece for the database. Mounted this way, the database seems to be extreamly fast and can be backed up by just copying the one file, and not dealing with accessing individual files within the database. This should only be considered if you are in a large environemnt, backing up a lot of data. Most people will never need such a work around. That being said, it's not for everyone. If you're only backing up one machine, use something else. If you like having the source code to the product, use something else. Use the right tool for the right job. -- Marc Christensen http://www.mecworks.com/ http://www.mecworks.com/~marc/resume/
On Wednesday 05 February 2003 23:23, Matt Stamm wrote:
I'm still pretty new to Linux. I have a Samba server up and running and need to install tape backup before I can setup our in-house users on the server. Any suggestions on where to get started. I browsed the Suse documentation and didn't find anything on tape backup. I also checked YAST and didn't anything on setting up a tape drive or installing tape backup software.
Any suggestions on tape drives and software would be appreciated.
Matt
Matt, check out W. Curtis Preston's Unix Backup book (O'Reilly) and the associated site http://www.storagemountain.com. Much of both will be overkill for what you need, and deal with issues like 'how do I restore my major corporate data centre after enemy bombing', but the first chapters of the book are devoted to issues like recovering from 'bare metal' i.e. if the whole disk is trashed, and the use of the backup tools included in various *nixes. Well worth it. On a small server I use dump to write all the partitions to a SCSI DDS3 tape, you will find various scripts around the net capable of doing this. Here's one I use on an OpenBSD machine, simple and probably poorly written but works ok: #!/bin/sh #Backup script for full backup TAPE=/dev/st0 # mt -f $TAPE rewind if [ $? -ne 0 ] then echo "Tape not on line!" exit 1 fi # echo " Starting Full Backup ..." /sbin/dump -0au -f /dev/nrst0 /dev/rsd0a /sbin/dump -0au -f /dev/nrst0 /dev/rsd0d /sbin/dump -0au -f /dev/nrst0 /dev/rsd0e /sbin/dump -0au -f /dev/nrst0 /dev/rsd0f /sbin/dump -0au -f /dev/nrst0 /dev/rsd0g /sbin/dump -0au -f /dev/nrst0 /dev/rsd0h /sbin/dump -0au -f /dev/nrst0 /dev/rsd1d echo echo -n " Rewinding tape, hang about. " mt rewoffl You then make this executable and run it from root's crontab. You'd need to read man mt, dump, and restore, and change the partition names of course - that script isn't for Linux - but this kind of thing can successfully backup the whole machine so long as your tape has the capacity. HTH Fergus -- Fergus Wilde Chetham's Library Long Millgate Manchester M3 1SB Tel: +44 161 834 7961 Fax: +44 161 839 5797 http://www.chethams.org.uk
participants (10)
-
Bruce Marshall -
Fergus Wilde -
John Andersen -
John LeMay -
Marc Christensen -
Matt Stamm -
Paul Uiterlinden -
Prabu Subroto -
Rohit -
Travis Owens