Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
On Thursday 23 April 2009, Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: On Donnerstag 23 April 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: as I wrote above, you got me thinking. If I can extract a multivolume archive created with star with gnutar I am sold and will try star. I have to have a closer look at the -fifo/fs= options. The man page makes it look promising. Star implements aprox. twice as many features than GNU tar. Star is even able to extract most if not all of those multi volume GNU tar archives that GNU tar does not like (while not being able to verify whether the follow up archive is the right one). Star intentionally does not implement write support for GNU tar multi volume archives because the GNU tar format is not a good idea. Jörg ok, I tried star last night. Backup worked well, but I made some mistake with the exclude file. Now I have a backup of /sys as well. Won't kill me. The - FF... option + .exclude is a very nice feature. Will test restore early next week. This has puzzled me too. Is there a way of passing the equivalent of tar's --exclude file_pattern at star, rather than a file containing a list of files to be excluded? I have been reading the -F,-FF ... but have failed to understand it so far :( Also, what happens if you run star to archive a directory that contains man info files? I have run this on a CentOS machine and I think I had to abort because it was taking for ever and the size of the archive had already frown to twice the size of a tar archive ... (not sure if it was related to me using exustar as a format?) The complete command was something like: star -c -xattr -H=exustar -sparce -M -C /media/hda6 . -f /media/backup/hda6_date.star PS. Is Ctrl+c meant to exit star, or was I too impatient - I recall having to kill the PID to get it to stop. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: This has puzzled me too. Is there a way of passing the equivalent of tar's --exclude file_pattern at star, rather than a file containing a list of files to be excluded? I have been reading the -F,-FF ... but have failed to understand it so far :( Tar has no --exclude option. You may be talking about a program that is not really tar compatible and that is called gtar ;-) Star has a pat= option since more than 20 years. In any case, if you like to make incremental backups, you should be very careful with exclude options as incremental restore it cannot work if an exclude file is renamed into the non-excluded universe. Also, what happens if you run star to archive a directory that contains man info files? I have run this on a CentOS machine and I think I had to abort because it was taking for ever and the size of the archive had already frown to twice the size of a tar archive ... (not sure if it was related to me Star does not go into infinite loops as long as your filesystem is not broken. using exustar as a format?) The complete command was something like: star -c -xattr -H=exustar -sparce -M -C /media/hda6 . -f /media/backup/hda6_date.star It seems that I need to enhance the substitute parser to abort star when a nonsense parameter is given to the -s option. PS. Is Ctrl+c meant to exit star, or was I too impatient - I recall having to kill the PID to get it to stop. Star works the same way as tar does: it does not abort leaving an inconsistent archive. For this reason, star first finishes with the current archive before exiting. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
On Monday 27 April 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote: Mick michaelkintz...@gmail.com wrote: This has puzzled me too. Is there a way of passing the equivalent of tar's --exclude file_pattern at star, rather than a file containing a list of files to be excluded? I have been reading the -F,-FF ... but have failed to understand it so far :( Tar has no --exclude option. You may be talking about a program that is not really tar compatible and that is called gtar ;-) Fair enough ... Star has a pat= option since more than 20 years. Is this a matter of running something like -V -pat=/sys ? In any case, if you like to make incremental backups, you should be very careful with exclude options as incremental restore it cannot work if an exclude file is renamed into the non-excluded universe. Good point, but something like /proc /sys and friends will stay the same, right? Also, what happens if you run star to archive a directory that contains man info files? I have run this on a CentOS machine and I think I had to abort because it was taking for ever and the size of the archive had already grown to twice the size of a tar archive ... (not sure if it was related to me Star does not go into infinite loops as long as your filesystem is not broken. What! RHEL? Ha, ha! I don't know if it went into a loop. The way that the archive size was growing I guessed that star was trying to unpack all the .gz man pages. I'll remember to try -xstar next time to see if it makes a difference. However, as you say there were some errors about missing attributes and what not (can't recall off hand). -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
On Donnerstag 23 April 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: as I wrote above, you got me thinking. If I can extract a multivolume archive created with star with gnutar I am sold and will try star. I have to have a closer look at the -fifo/fs= options. The man page makes it look promising. Star implements aprox. twice as many features than GNU tar. Star is even able to extract most if not all of those multi volume GNU tar archives that GNU tar does not like (while not being able to verify whether the follow up archive is the right one). Star intentionally does not implement write support for GNU tar multi volume archives because the GNU tar format is not a good idea. Jörg ok, I tried star last night. Backup worked well, but I made some mistake with the exclude file. Now I have a backup of /sys as well. Won't kill me. The - FF... option + .exclude is a very nice feature. Will test restore early next week.
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
Thomas Chef wrote: Hello ! Now that my gentoo system is up and running the applications that I want to use, how do I make a reliable backup ? Can I follow the guide on: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Backup_to_DVD Is that a proven/working method ? / Thomas A lot of people recommend mondo-rescue. I think it creates a bootable CD/DVD and you can restore from there. I have never used this but it gets mentioned a lot. Also, just look around in app-backup and see what you can find. You may find something that better suites your needs. For me, I use Kbackup to back up my data, portage tree, and config files that I can use to rebuild from. It works well enough for me. It will even size the tarballs to fit on the CD/DVD too. This would mean recompiling everything again but that's just me. Most of this will depend on what you are needing to backup, whether you want a command line tool or GUI and a few other odds and ends. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
Thomas Chef a gentiment tapote: Hello ! Now that my gentoo system is up and running the applications that I want to use, how do I make a reliable backup ? Can I follow the guide on: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Backup_to_DVD Is that a proven/working method ? / Thomas Hi, I use partimage with SysRescueCD (live CD) for years. It works really fine and is very reliable ! http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page Cheers, -- Jacques
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
Thomas Chef thomas.c...@gmail.com wrote: Now that my gentoo system is up and running the applications that I want to use, how do I make a reliable backup ? Can I follow the guide on: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Backup_to_DVD Is that a proven/working method ? Be very careful as GNU tar is buggy and does not always like to read continuation volumes from multi volume archives. This is extremely nasty as you will realize the problem once it is too late. GNU tar also does not support to archive all meta data from Linux. I recommend to use star. Star implementes reliable multi volume support and archives all meta data that is available on Linux. Only a reliable multi volume support inside the archiver allows you to read back archives starting past volume#1. Note that star also implements a nice true incremental backup feature that does not need additional data while creating backups. There is a database for old and new inode numbers in incremental restore mode. Check the star man page for examples on backups and incremental backups. Use tsize=4200k -multivol to tell star to write archives with multi volume information that split files across volumes. Use mkisofs to create a ISO filesystem (hve a look at the -stream-media-size option. Use cdrecord to write the ISO file to DVD. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 09:24:00AM +0200, Penguin Lover Thomas Chef squawked: Now that my gentoo system is up and running the applications that I want to use, how do I make a reliable backup ? Personally I use app-backup/rdiff-backup and dump not to DVD, but to an external harddrive stored in a different room on a different floor. (Yes, the building may collapse, but then I'd have bigger things to worry about than my family photos.) rdiff-backup does incrementals. So it also allows me to keep several restore points. I generally remove all restore points older than 6 months. But it is up to you. I just run a bash-script every month or so that * copies /var/lib/portage/world to /root * copies /usr/src/linux/.config to /root * back up /etc, /root, /usr/local * back up /home With those files I can rebuild my system fairly simply. (I wouldn't say quickly as... you know how long some things takes to build.) W -- Let me just make k -1. Mathematica responds : False ~DeathMech, S. Sondhi. P-town PHY 205 Sortir en Pantoufles: up 866 days, 12:41
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
On Mittwoch 22 April 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote: Thomas Chef thomas.c...@gmail.com wrote: Now that my gentoo system is up and running the applications that I want to use, how do I make a reliable backup ? Can I follow the guide on: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Backup_to_DVD Is that a proven/working method ? Be very careful as GNU tar is buggy and does not always like to read continuation volumes from multi volume archives. This is extremely nasty as you will realize the problem once it is too late. oh really? it works very well with my tapelib. And yes, restore works. GNU tar also does not support to archive all meta data from Linux. which is only relevant if you use acls, isn't it? I recommend to use star. Star implementes reliable multi volume support and archives all meta data that is available on Linux. Only a reliable multi volume support inside the archiver allows you to read back archives starting past volume#1. can star decompress files?
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mittwoch 22 April 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote: Thomas Chef thomas.c...@gmail.com wrote: Now that my gentoo system is up and running the applications that I want to use, how do I make a reliable backup ? Can I follow the guide on: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Backup_to_DVD Is that a proven/working method ? Be very careful as GNU tar is buggy and does not always like to read continuation volumes from multi volume archives. This is extremely nasty as you will realize the problem once it is too late. oh really? it works very well with my tapelib. And yes, restore works. There is a 1-5% chance that GNU tar does fail this way, did you try to restore enough GNU tar multi-volume archives? Did you restore more than 100 multi-volume archives? GNU tar uses a method for multi-volume archives that cannot support all possible cases. Star uses a mwthod that is granted to always work reliably. GNU tar also does not support to archive all meta data from Linux. which is only relevant if you use acls, isn't it? ACLs, xattrs and others. I recommend to use star. Star implementes reliable multi volume support and archives all meta data that is available on Linux. Only a reliable multi volume support inside the archiver allows you to read back archives starting past volume#1. can star decompress files? Are you kidding? Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
On Mittwoch 22 April 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: On Mittwoch 22 April 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote: Thomas Chef thomas.c...@gmail.com wrote: Now that my gentoo system is up and running the applications that I want to use, how do I make a reliable backup ? Can I follow the guide on: http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Backup_to_DVD Is that a proven/working method ? Be very careful as GNU tar is buggy and does not always like to read continuation volumes from multi volume archives. This is extremely nasty as you will realize the problem once it is too late. oh really? it works very well with my tapelib. And yes, restore works. There is a 1-5% chance that GNU tar does fail this way, did you try to restore enough GNU tar multi-volume archives? Did you restore more than 100 multi-volume archives? No, just a couple of douzend so far. My lib takes 8 cardridges. So far no problems. I did maybe four or five complete restores so far. Before that I had a single dlt drive and played disc jokey - no problems there too. So I am well below the 100 multi-volume archives, but well above the 30 mark. GNU tar uses a method for multi-volume archives that cannot support all possible cases. Star uses a mwthod that is granted to always work reliably. GNU tar also does not support to archive all meta data from Linux. which is only relevant if you use acls, isn't it? ACLs, xattrs and others. okay. Then tar is still good enough for me. See, it is a good thing that you wrote star (and cdrecord and other things). Your code is much appreciated - but I am very reluctant to use a piece of software when another one I am currently using is 'good enough' for me. Since I don't use acls or xattrs the lack of support in gnu tar does not hurt me. I also had a hard time to figure out the optimal command line to use my tapelib - I don't want to do that again with star if I don't have to. I recommend to use star. Star implementes reliable multi volume support and archives all meta data that is available on Linux. Only a reliable multi volume support inside the archiver allows you to read back archives starting past volume#1. can star decompress files? Are you kidding? nope. http://bulk.fefe.de/lk2006/ For some reason, my tar hung on Solaris. I have no idea why. truss showed that it wasn't in a syscall at that time. So I used star instead. Turns out that star can't do star xzf -, it will say Can only compress files. ROTFL! OK, so I used |gzip -dc|star xf - instead. What the hell.
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: There is a 1-5% chance that GNU tar does fail this way, did you try to restore enough GNU tar multi-volume archives? Did you restore more than 100 multi-volume archives? No, just a couple of douzend so far. My lib takes 8 cardridges. So far no problems. I did maybe four or five complete restores so far. Before that I had a single dlt drive and played disc jokey - no problems there too. So I am well below the 100 multi-volume archives, but well above the 30 mark. For me it happened with the second try A few years after I made a bug report, the GNU tar maintainers made the probability for this to happen a bit lower but they did not change the basic format that cannot support all cases. ACLs, xattrs and others. okay. Then tar is still good enough for me. Well, there is no tar on Linux. GNU tar is not tar and GNU tar still does not by default write tar compatible archives. Star is much closer to tar than GNU tar is... See, it is a good thing that you wrote star (and cdrecord and other things). Your code is much appreciated - but I am very reluctant to use a piece of software when another one I am currently using is 'good enough' for me. Since I don't use acls or xattrs the lack of support in gnu tar does not hurt me. I also had a hard time to figure out the optimal command line to use my tapelib - I don't want to do that again with star if I don't have to. If you trust GNU tar, this is your personal decision. I definitely don't trust GNU tar. Every time I was considering to implement a feature (seen first in GNU tar) for star, I thought about possible implementation problems and I _always_ found a GNU tar bus in less than 5 minutes. The fact that fixing GNU tar bugs I reported to the GNU tar maintainers did take between 2 and 15 years makes me asume that GNU tar is not well maintained. can star decompress files? Are you kidding? nope. http://bulk.fefe.de/lk2006/ For some reason, my tar hung on Solaris. I have no idea why. truss showed that it wasn't in a syscall at that time. So I used star instead. Turns out that star can't do star xzf -, it will say Can only compress files. ROTFL! OK, so I used |gzip -dc|star xf - instead. What the hell. Your mistake is to quote a well known troll. This troll in special did use a command line that would expect him to manually type _compressed_ _tar_ _archives_ on his tty... BTW: recent star versions would print star: Archive cannot be a tty. for his useless command line. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
On Mittwoch 22 April 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: There is a 1-5% chance that GNU tar does fail this way, did you try to restore enough GNU tar multi-volume archives? Did you restore more than 100 multi-volume archives? No, just a couple of douzend so far. My lib takes 8 cardridges. So far no problems. I did maybe four or five complete restores so far. Before that I had a single dlt drive and played disc jokey - no problems there too. So I am well below the 100 multi-volume archives, but well above the 30 mark. For me it happened with the second try A few years after I made a bug report, the GNU tar maintainers made the probability for this to happen a bit lower but they did not change the basic format that cannot support all cases. hm, well, that got me thinking. Because stable multi volume support is very important for me. More than being close to other tars. But - can I extract a multivolume tar archive created by star with gnu tar? The man page is not entirely clear and for restore I have to assume that star is not available. ACLs, xattrs and others. okay. Then tar is still good enough for me. Well, there is no tar on Linux. GNU tar is not tar and GNU tar still does not by default write tar compatible archives. Star is much closer to tar than GNU tar is... well, IMHO this is a bit 'academic'. GNU tar does what I expect it to do - if there are differences, they don't seem to be relevant to me or most linux users. But I don't claim that I am the norm to measure against. You seem to have been running into trouble by this differences? See, it is a good thing that you wrote star (and cdrecord and other things). Your code is much appreciated - but I am very reluctant to use a piece of software when another one I am currently using is 'good enough' for me. Since I don't use acls or xattrs the lack of support in gnu tar does not hurt me. I also had a hard time to figure out the optimal command line to use my tapelib - I don't want to do that again with star if I don't have to. If you trust GNU tar, this is your personal decision. I definitely don't trust GNU tar. Every time I was considering to implement a feature (seen first in GNU tar) for star, I thought about possible implementation problems and I _always_ found a GNU tar bus in less than 5 minutes. The fact that fixing GNU tar bugs I reported to the GNU tar maintainers did take between 2 and 15 years makes me asume that GNU tar is not well maintained. as I wrote above, you got me thinking. If I can extract a multivolume archive created with star with gnutar I am sold and will try star. I have to have a closer look at the -fifo/fs= options. The man page makes it look promising. can star decompress files? Are you kidding? nope. http://bulk.fefe.de/lk2006/ For some reason, my tar hung on Solaris. I have no idea why. truss showed that it wasn't in a syscall at that time. So I used star instead. Turns out that star can't do star xzf -, it will say Can only compress files. ROTFL! OK, so I used |gzip -dc|star xf - instead. What the hell. Your mistake is to quote a well known troll. This troll in special did use a command line that would expect him to manually type _compressed_ _tar_ _archives_ on his tty... ah, okay that explains a lot. Glück Auf, Volker
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: as I wrote above, you got me thinking. If I can extract a multivolume archive created with star with gnutar I am sold and will try star. I have to have a closer look at the -fifo/fs= options. The man page makes it look promising. Star implements aprox. twice as many features than GNU tar. Star is even able to extract most if not all of those multi volume GNU tar archives that GNU tar does not like (while not being able to verify whether the follow up archive is the right one). Star intentionally does not implement write support for GNU tar multi volume archives because the GNU tar format is not a good idea. Jörg -- EMail:jo...@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin j...@cs.tu-berlin.de(uni) joerg.schill...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/ URL: http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily
Re: [gentoo-user] Backup and Restore
On Donnerstag 23 April 2009, Joerg Schilling wrote: Volker Armin Hemmann volkerar...@googlemail.com wrote: as I wrote above, you got me thinking. If I can extract a multivolume archive created with star with gnutar I am sold and will try star. I have to have a closer look at the -fifo/fs= options. The man page makes it look promising. Star implements aprox. twice as many features than GNU tar. Star is even able to extract most if not all of those multi volume GNU tar archives that GNU tar does not like (while not being able to verify whether the follow up archive is the right one). Star intentionally does not implement write support for GNU tar multi volume archives because the GNU tar format is not a good idea. so gnutar can not extract star multivolumes but star can extract gnutar multivolumes? I just saw that systemrescuecd is costumizable - so this non-support by gnutar might not be a blocker afterall. Glück Auf, Volker
