> To get those off: > > tar -zxvf /dev/st0 <filespec> > > The "z" in tar will compress/uncompress them on the fly. There are far > better utilities for doing backups than tar. But in a pinch, it works. Let's
That's one aspect where the commercial backup systems should fare better than plain 'tar' -- selective restore. The tape solution I had back when I was using DOS let me just point and click files that I wanted to restore. Plus, the files were stored at the beginning in a special hash / index file, so if you wanted to restore 'foo' it would fast-forward to where foo was, and get it. In a pinch, tar works well -- and it's best for full system restores, since the other solutions are usually too bgi and/or require too much installed just to run off of a floppy. The other available packages (arkeia, etc.) also may do better at incremental or differential system backups -- but that's an area that I have not yet tried. Just remember that a tape is a sequential device, so selective file restore is less convenient. Speaking of backups, there is 'dump' and 'restore' - these are less familiar for most linux people, but they are fairly entrenched in bsd. dump is probably harder to use and more arcane, and I've played with it less than 'tar' but it does let you rummage around the tape almost like a filesystem, you can interactively list directories, and so forth. (With this thread and the recent one on recording streams I hope I get to have an impact changing magnetic patterns on a whole slew of systems out there :). > Ric
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