D'oh! Backup issue solved

From: Richard Erlacher <richard_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sun Sep 3 11:54:10 2000

There's one gotcha with the SAMBA (SMB) approach to this problem and that's
in connection with the DOS backups I also have to do. My serious work, PCB
layout, schematic capture, digital simulation, etc, is done largely in a
10-year-old DOS-based package. Reasons aside, what this means is that I
still have to consider memory requirements for those applications. The SMB
driver package(s) I've looked at have too large a memory requirement to fit,
together with rather voluminous SCSI driver requirements imposed by my need
for interchangeable media used together with the software I need. This
means that I either use SAMBA or I get the work done, and not both.

Of course, I could compromise, in that I could run the software under WIN9x,
but that limits the display resolution I can use, since Win9x forces me to
use an 800x600 resolution. I really prefer to be able to see the nearly 1:1
representation of a B-size (11x17") drawing on the CRT and still be able to
read the lettering.

Moreover, the Windows drivers for my HP 9585B plotter don't work properly,
while the ones internal to the drafting package have always worked just
fine. I have several packages under DOS that work properly, and not one
under Windows, since the authors of the drivers apparently thought the
$13,000 "E" size plotters work just like the $175 "A" size ones, which is
not the case.

Part of the backup problem is because of the long file names, since the
DOS-based package that backs up and restores with complete reliability
doesn't like long file names, and the software that understands the long
file names doesn't understand backup.

Yes, the LINUX is an option, but I'll not use it until there's
synchronization between the documentation and the software in current usage.
That seems millenia away, however.

Dick



----- Original Message -----
From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner <spc_at_armigeron.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2000 10:04 PM
Subject: Re: D'oh! Backup issue solved


> It was thus said that the Great Richard Erlacher once stated:
> >
> > Yes, that would be a nice feature, but I'd be satisfied for starters
with
> > ANY Win9x-based utility that actually would provide a no-nonsense backup
> > procedure, one that would recognize that it formatted the tape, one that
> > would follow its own schedule and would recognize the same tape each
time it
> > was in the drive. I'd like it to start within 1 minute of when it's
invoked
> > when running on a 150 MHz machine, and that wouldn't ask me more than
once
> > if REALLY want to do what I just typed. I'd like it to go ahead and
back up
> > the files it can back up and skip the ones it can't, without human
> > intervention, and NEVER create new files that subsequently require it be
> > manually instructed, file by file, not to back up the files the program
> > itself created in order to perform the backup, all of which are, of
course.
> > open. When I'm using a 20-tape library, I'd prefer it NOT ask for
> > permission to use the next tape, and, having gotten that perimssion, I'd
> > prefer it not ask again before overwriting the tape. I'd prefer it be
able
> > to read the backup it wrote yesterday, and I'd be happy if it could
> > recognize the tape it just formatted.
>
> If you can, try to get the Cygnus GNU package for Windows, which
includes
> tar (stands for Tape ARchive). A friend of mine had to back up something
> like 40 or 50g worth of data and the program he was using on NT would stop
> at the first file it couldn't read and require human intervention (and
even
> then, it refused to continue). After several attempts at a workaround, we
> gave up, installed tar and while it couldn't communicate with the tape
> drive, we did manage to backup the data onto another drive (in our case,
we
> had one local) and tar basically skipped the files it couldn't read (which
> is what we really needed).
>
> > If there were even one program that really would work, producing
unattended
> > backups of the whole system over the LAN every day, assuming there's
enough
> > bandwidth on its 100Mb channel, I'd use it. I've bought a half dozen
> > different vendors' offerings, and half of them don't even run, let alone
> > perform backups.
>
> Install one of the free Unix systems (Linux, *BSD) on an older box, slap
> Samba on it, and use the Unix backup systems. Might actually work and
it'll
> definitely be cheaper.
>
> -spc (Of course, run the fvwm95 window manager under X and many won't
> notice it's not NT ... 8-)
>
>
Received on Sun Sep 03 2000 - 11:54:10 BST