On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Gene Heskett wrote: > On Tuesday 05 September 2006 05:24, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: > >On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Phil Howard wrote: > >> On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 06:39:40PM -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote: > >> | It certainly would destroy one of amanda's features, > >> | the ability to easily recover backup data using > >> | standard unix utilities without amanda software. > >> > >> How is that destroyed? > >> > >> Suppose you use tar format. You can have tar read from tape directly, > >> which is what I presume you mean for being able to recover outside of > >> Amanda. You can have tar read from disk partitions if the native > >> partition scheme is used. > > > >At first I had the same reaction as you: it would work fine if you would > > cycle your tapedev through the partitions. However, then I realized a > > tape can store multiple `files' sequentially, while a disk partition > > can't (without hackerish that would annihiliate the easy recovery > > again). > > > >So as long as you dump only one DLE, it would work fine. If you dump more > > than one DLE, you need more logic. > > I don't know how this conclusion was reached, but IMO its wrong. > One of the beauties of amanda is that bare metal recoveries can be done > with nothing more than dd, tar(or dump if that what was used) and gzip. > > Its far more trouble to locate a file you want on a sequential tape than it > is to locate it in a vtape. The vtape itself is nothing more than a > subdir in a subdir in the filesystem of the hard drive. Switching the > vtapes is as simple as replacing the link to the directory called data, > with a new link named data that points at the desired directory.
Yes, that's true. But this discussion was about using raw partitions on a disk instead of files on a filesystem on a disk. Gr{oetje,eeting}s, Geert -- Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that. -- Linus Torvalds