Arno Lehmann wrote: > Hi, > > 25.06.2007 23:58,, Chris Hoogendyk wrote:: > >> Kern Sibbald wrote: >> >>> You should read what Linus has to say about dump! I don't remember his >>> exact >>> words but something to the effect that "yes, it seems to work, but if you >>> really understood kernel caching, you would realize that it cannot work and >>> that one day you will get burned." That's paraphrased. By the way, aside >>> from tar, dump is the major component of Amanda :-) I wonder when the >>> Zmanda >>> VCs will realize that they spent $13 million for dump technology that Linus >>> says is destined to break :-) amusing (at least to me). >>> >> I've heard many times, from many people, that dump is broken on linux. >> >> Most linux users of amanda use gtar -- not dump. >> > > That makes me wonder - how does gtar handle extended attributes? A > google search didn't reveal anything definite, and the manual doesn't > mention them, too. > > >> Most Solaris users of amanda use ufsdump. I've never heard that ufsdump >> is broken. >> > > Hmm... not broken per se, but it's got the problem with portability. > > >> Neither dump nor tar are components of amanda. They come with the client >> OS or are installed there by the sysadmin separately from amanda. If >> you're clever enough to do it, you can even stream other backup output >> to amanda instead. >> > > I checked on the Zmanda site, and a quick search seems to indicate > that they recommend gtar and dump as choices for the actual backups. > The fact that you can implant other methods using custom backup > commands may make the resulting backups even less portable, I think. > > As amanda is built around the OS tools for backup and restore - dump > and tar - it just has to work with their problems. Bacula, on the > other hand, has it's own problems to handle :-)
Portability is an interesting question. For bacula, within a site, or across sites, assuming they are using bacula, you can recover data files on different platforms. However, you need bacula to do it, and you still can't take a Solaris OS file or binary and put it on a Linux or Windows system and expect to do anything with it. So user data (assuming it is in a cross platform format) is portable across platforms, but not across backup software. In other words, I can't take a bacula tape and expect to recover it with amanda, Tivoli, NetBackup, etc. So, a faculty member moving to another institution will have to ask them to get bacula running in order to get their data. For amanda, backups are done using the native utilities of the operating system. So amanda is not required. A competent sysadmin can simply read the tape using dd on a Unix system. I'm not sure how they would handle a Solaris tape on a Windows system, but they could read it on a Linux system (if it used gtar rather than ufsdump). The instructions are in simple text on the tape label and the file label (first record respectively on the tape and the files on the tape), including the exact commands required to read the tape. So, with amanda the tape is portable across sites, even if they don't have amanda. But it may not be as portable across platforms (particularly to/from windows) as bacula, assuming that they have bacula running. There is also the question of tape media. If I send an AIT5 tape to a site that uses only LTO3, they are going to have a bit of a problem reading it regardless of how it was written. --------------- Chris Hoogendyk - O__ ---- Systems Administrator c/ /'_ --- Biology & Geology Departments (*) \(*) -- 140 Morrill Science Center ~~~~~~~~~~ - University of Massachusetts, Amherst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------- Erdös 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
