On Tue, Jul 25, 2000 at 06:52:45PM -0500, brent harding wrote:
> I got a couple of questions about using ftape.
> 1. Is there any good, non-gui front ends to afio, tar, etc that I can use
> to select, backup, and restore files? Ideally something that I could use on
> a rescue disk to recover from a disaster, or perhaps if I delete the wrong
> user, along with the accompanying home directory, I could recreate the
> user, and restore the home directory easily.
There's one called taper, and one called KBackup. I didn't like
either, YMMV.
> 2. Do I really need to worry about vtblc at all, to make successfull
> backups? I don't know the least about changing more than descriptions in
> the volume table, as most values, like the begin and end segments of a
> backup are hard to determine, does tar take care of it when I use tar czfp
> /dev/tape . from the root directory? Can I update/delete files out of the
No, you don't need vtblc, unless you want to name your backups. zftape
will emulate a SCSI tape drive.
> backup set, like /proc I got that I don't want on the backup? I figured
There's a tar option to exclude directories, similarly for other
backup programs.
> running the whole system backup is easiest, as debian 2.2 on CD isn't out,
> I must use kernel 2.2x or higher and probably not test kernels. My tape
> drive works with no more parameters than insmod ftape, what debian fills in
> makes module installation fail, though, so I don't know how to initialize
> it on boot, or does another module need to be loaded in modconf first?
> Something with parm or something, invalid parameter, yet insmod ftape at
> the prompt works fine, although I'm likely to forget to do it, and start
> sending my whole system as a tar archive to a not configured device.
Which tape drive do you have which version of ftape? The ftape built
in the to kernel is very old, you may want to download the latest
version, if you haven't already, from:
http://www.instmath.rwth-aachen.de/~heine/ftape/
In any case, you need at least the ftape and zftape modules loaded,
and one for your specific hardware (ftape-internal possibly). You may
also need to pass parameters for IRQ, IO and DMA settings, and if you
have a plug 'n pray accelerator, it'll need setting up first.
Robie.
--
Robie Basak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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