n Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 03:31:09PM -0600, McKown, John wrote: > I'm in the same situation, but I can answer some questions. > > 1) You cannot backup a LINUX disk to tape from outside of the LINUX system, > if the disk (filesystem) is mounted in WRITE mode. This would result in a > "fuzzy" backup since LINUX does not immediately write all disk updates to > the filesystem. The backup would likely be no good.
"No good" is a bit harsh. Files that are open at the time the backup is made may be corrupted. The disk will look like it would if you yanked the plug on a running system. This means that an fsck will certainly be required. It means you *may* lose data. It means you really shouldn't rely on this as your DR strategy. However, it's lots better than nothing. There are products which do a nice job of file-level backup of Linux/390 systems. Most of the commercial ones require a z/OS server, alas. However, Amanda doesn't, although L/390 tape support is pretty rudimentary. Adam
