[gtaSAGE-members] backup client

[Robert Brockway]

On Sun, 15 Jun 2003, Duane Bedeau wrote:

> Yes, I've done the homegrown tar thing and I've looked at AMANDA...
> homegrown tar does indeed backup/restore but there's no way for me to see
> ahead of time how much data I've backed up so far (and conversely,
> how much more left to go) while it's running... It's not a huge issue,

The dump family (dump, ufsdump, xfsdump, etc, etc) do this nicely,
providing periodical output of how much data is left to dump and an
estimate of the time to completion.  You'd need to look for a seperate gui
frontend though.  There is a dump suitable for just about every unix
filesystem.  Reiserfs is a notable exceptiom (despite the existance of a
reiserdump which is really just a frontend to tar).

> and currently I'm using tar to dump my stuff to tape but it just seems so
> 1980s'ish!

If it ain't broke don't fix it :)

Seriously, tar does have an enduring quality.  Tools like cpio which were
claimed to be "a better tar than tar"  have failed to knock tar off its
perch as the pre-eminant unix archival tool.  I think this is a
combination of legacy and suitability.  Unless a tool comes out which is
_significantly_ better than tar at doing certain jobs few will have the
inclination to learn a new tool when tar does "well enough".

Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert@timetraveller.org  ICQ: 104781119
Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
"The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah