I sent this once, but I think it missed the list so here goes...
When we were coming thru the file system we had a similar set of
problems. The first one was making sure we had all the volumes
covered. To overcome this we ran "vos listvol" on each server at the
beginning of each backup run and removed any readonly and backup
volumes from the results. We then had a directory called BackUp
somewhere in our AFS space and created a mountpoint for each volume,
if it didn't already exist. To avoid name colision we created a
subdirectory for each part of the volume name, breakin on .'s, so
user.jmck would become .../BackUp/user/jmck. About once a month we
would delete all the mountpoints in the directories and let the next
backup recreate them. That solved the problem with any volumes that
might have been deleted.
Once we had that in place the next problem was making sure that we
didn't descend thru a mountpoint and end up backing up a volume 2 (or
more) times or create a loop because a volume mounted something that
was its parent. The way we did this was to look at the i-node number
of each directory. If a directory had an even numbered i-node it was
a mount point, if it was odd then it was a regular directory and we
would descend thru it. I'm a little fuzzy on this, but I ran a couple
of quick tests this morning and that appears to be the case, but I
would still do some testing on your end.
We've recently moved to another backup system called teradactyl
because it handles our Unix (various flavors), Windows 95/98/NT, and
AFS needs. It's a relatively new product that we were a beta site
for, but we've had really good luck with it to date. It still has
some rough edges but the guys working on it are very eager to see it
work and go so they have been very cooperative, helpful, and open to
suggestions. Your mileage may vary, but you can take a look at
www.teradactly.com for more information (sorry about the commercial
info to the list, but it seems relevant).
Hope this helps.
thanx
-jmck
--
Jim McKinney [EMAIL PROTECTED]
System Administrator Manager, ECE Office: HH1304
Carnegie Mellon University (412) 268-5141
Age doesn't always bring wisdom. Sometimes age comes alone.
