flexbackup-help — Support/help/usage

[flexbackup-help] vxa tape drives

[Nathan K. <kr...@gm...>]

Has anyone ever used or are currently using vxa-2 or any vxa tape
drives with flexbackup?

We're attempting to use a small vxa-2 tape robot with flexbackup, but
the index file is lost after one archive backup.  The huge amoung of
space of vxa tapes are lost if multiple backups cannot be made to the
same tape.  I only tried multiple archives using tar and afio, both
had the same results, the index file become missing after the second
archive.  If I continue to backup new archives, the previous one
appears to be lost.

Any help is greatly appreciated!  

Thanks.

Re: [flexbackup-help] Flexbackup error: offending command afio -o -E <non existent file>?!?

[Scott C. <sc...@bn...>]

On Friday 05 November 2004 10:06, G=F6ran T=F6rnqvist wrote:
>
> -1 "Defined letters are a for ignoring all possible warnings on exit, and=
 m
> for ignoring the warning about missing files, which will occur when, on
> creating an archive, a file whose name was read  from  the standard  input
> is  not found.  The default is -1 m."
>
> So if the file is missing it shouldn't return an error, right, so my
> assumption is that the error here should be something different.

Could be.  I am not sure what your error might be.  One of the uses I put
flexbackup to is to back up some Windows 2000 PCs.  I have their C drives
mounted onto my backup server.  When flexbackup runs it sometimes finds
files on the PCs which are locked (typically mail files).  I have the "-1 a"
parameter set for afio, but it still seems to return an error for this.
(I guess software does not always perform as advertised, or I am mis-
understanding its behavior. :)

> Anyway when=20
> I tried to change to "-1 a" checking /etc/flexbackup.conf ,the -1 m switch
> wasn't there. I'll need to read and learn more about flexbackup I guess :)

You need to look in the flexbackup script itself, not the flexbackup.conf
file.  On my Debian systems it is in /usr/bin.  It is just a (very large!)
perl script which you can edit.  (Make a backup copy first.)  Search for
the "-1 m" string.

> I will check the flexbackup -ignore-errors if that switch can help me. But
> is that "good behavior", to tell flexbackup to ignore errors?

Well, it may not be "good behavior" in some universal moral sense, but it
solves the problem and the backups get done.  (For my needs anyway, your
milage may very.)

Scott

=2D-=20
* Scott Coburn
* Brookhaven National Laboratory
* sc...@bn... 631.344.7110
* This message brought to you by Debian Linux.

Re: [flexbackup-help] Flexbackup error: offending command afio -o -E <non existent file>?!?

[<go...@go...>]

Hello, and thanks for the reply :)

Checked "man afio" and the -1 parameter is there (Version 2.4.7) but -1 m
means:

-1 "Defined letters are a for ignoring all possible warnings on exit, and m
for ignoring the warning about missing files, which will occur when, on
creating an archive, a file whose name was read  from  the standard  input
is  not found.  The default is -1 m."

So if the file is missing it shouldn't return an error, right, so my
assumption is that the error here should be something different. Anyway when
I tried to change to "-1 a" checking /etc/flexbackup.conf ,the -1 m switch
wasn't there. I'll need to read and learn more about flexbackup I guess :)


I will check the flexbackup -ignore-errors if that switch can help me. But
is that "good behavior", to tell flexbackup to ignore errors?



Thanks again...



Best Regards

Goran


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Scott Coburn" <sc...@bn...>
To: <fle...@li...>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 11:37 PM
Subject: Re: [flexbackup-help] Flexbackup error: offending command
afio -o -E <non existent file>?!?


On Thursday 04 November 2004 16:42, Göran Törnqvist wrote:
>
> afio -o -E /tmp/nocompress.60176 -z -1 m -P gzip -Q -4 -Z -M 2m -T
3k -v -b 10k
>

Goran,

The problem is that 'afio' is returning to the flexbackup script
with an error (some file missing or some such?).

The command parameters passed by flexbackup to afio have changed
in the recent versions.  See the afio man page, specifically the '-1'
parameter.  You can edit the flexbackup script to fix this.  Search
for '-1 m ' and change it to '-1 a ' (note the trailing space character).
(You can see the '-l m' in the afio command line above.)

See also the flexbackup '-ignore-errors' parameter to help solve
your problem.

Scott

-- 
* Scott Coburn
* Brookhaven National Laboratory
* sc...@bn... 631.344.7110
* This message brought to you by Debian Linux.


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Re: [flexbackup-help] Flexbackup error: offending command afio -o -E <non existent file>?!?

[Scott C. <sc...@bn...>]

On Thursday 04 November 2004 16:42, G=F6ran T=F6rnqvist wrote:
>
> afio -o -E /tmp/nocompress.60176 -z -1 m -P gzip -Q -4 -Z -M 2m -T 3k -v =
=2Db 10k=20
> =20

Goran,

The problem is that 'afio' is returning to the flexbackup script
with an error (some file missing or some such?).

The command parameters passed by flexbackup to afio have changed
in the recent versions.  See the afio man page, specifically the '-1'
parameter.  You can edit the flexbackup script to fix this.  Search
for '-1 m ' and change it to '-1 a ' (note the trailing space character).
(You can see the '-l m' in the afio command line above.)

See also the flexbackup '-ignore-errors' parameter to help solve
your problem.

Scott

=2D-=20
* Scott Coburn
* Brookhaven National Laboratory
* sc...@bn... 631.344.7110
* This message brought to you by Debian Linux.

[flexbackup-help] Flexbackup error: offending command afio -o -E <non existent file>?!?

[<go...@go...>]

Hello,

I=92m backing upp the /home directory with:

/usr/local/bin/flexbackup -set bck-home -full -type afio >logfile

=20

It used to work fine but now when I do this I get the following at the =
end
of the backup:

=20

afio: 2898m+128k+0 bytes written in 875 seconds. The operation HAD 1 =
WARNING
ABOUT ERRORS.

296768+0 records in

296768+0 records out

3038904320 bytes transferred in 874.245864 secs (3476029 bytes/sec)

=20

ERROR from backup, exiting

offending command(s):

afio -o -E /tmp/nocompress.60176 -z -1 m -P gzip -Q -4 -Z -M 2m -T 3k -v =
-b
10k =96

=20

The file /home/tmp/nocompress.60176 or /tmp/nocompress.60176 doesn=92t =
exist
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don=92t understand this error, I searched the logfile for any errors =
but I
can=92t find any.

The logfile is also huge so it=92s possible that there=92s something I =
missed
but I don=92t really know what to look for or =93grep=94.

=20

HELP ! :-)

=20

Best Regards

Goran

=20

[flexbackup-help] Remote device

[Angelo S. <se...@ss...>]

Hi,
Can I set as 'device' in flexbackup.conf a directory on a remote
machine?
Thanks
a.

--
========================================================
 Angelo Secchi                     PGP Key ID:EA280337
========================================================
  Current Position:
  Graduate Fellow Scuola Superiore S.Anna
  Piazza Martiri della Liberta' 33, Pisa, 56127 Italy
  ph.: +39 050 883365
  email: se...@ss...	www.sssup.it/~secchi/
========================================================

[flexbackup-help] strange flexbackup behaviour

[Tadas K. <tka...@fr...>]

Hello,
i started to use flexbackup few weeks ago, at the start everything was
ok, but now i discovered that flexbackup do not include some files that
were modified for sure, f.e. database files.  As for example i'll
provide list of files what were backuped, first one is full backup and
to one's are incrimental and include db files, but starting from oct 13,
they are not included     in archivers. Can anyone explain to me why
flexbackup acts like that? Maybe i missing something?

-rw-r--r--   1 root root 713109019 Oct 10 09:14
target-mnt-2-shared.0.200410100909.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  18338963 Oct 11 01:00
target-mnt-2-shared.1.200410110100.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root root  12402903 Oct 12 01:00
target-mnt-2-shared.1.200410120100.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   6204452 Oct 13 01:00
target-mnt-2-shared.1.200410130100.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   3669630 Oct 14 01:00
target-mnt-2-shared.1.200410140100.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   3269696 Oct 15 01:00
target-mnt-2-shared.1.200410150100.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   3272000 Oct 16 01:00
target-mnt-2-shared.1.200410160100.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   3319201 Oct 17 01:00
target-mnt-2-shared.1.200410170100.tar.gz
-rw-r--r--   1 root root   3319214 Oct 18 01:00
target-mnt-2-shared.1.200410180100.tar.gz
My crontab:
0   1    *     *  1-6 root flexbackup -set shared -incremental
0   1  8-31    *    7 root flexbackup -set shared -differential
0   1  1-7     *    * root flexbackup -wday 7 -set shared -full
ps. sorry for my english
Regards,
Tadas

Re: [flexbackup-help] Using Flexbackup with a USB hard drive

[Randall M. <ra...@gs...>]

Robert Wilson wrote:
> Hi,
> I am getting to grips with using Flexbackup onto my USb had disk drive.  
> Before i was just using the TAR command and archiving my /home directory 
> onto the drive as a backup.tar.gz.  This was fine but then I decided to 
> try out Flexbackup, as I have in the past used SME Server for myself and 
> a number of clients I do stuff for, and I know SME uses Flexbackup.  I 
> have some questions...
> 
> 1, What I was trying to get my head round as does Flexbackup place its 
> own version of a TAR file onto the drive?

The file that is written is a standard tar/afio/cpio/dump file (depending
on how you configured it), and probably compressed (again according to
your configuration file). Flexbackup is just a script that makes everything
easier. You could read those files without flexbackup, using tar/cpio/afio etc.
 From the web page FAQ's:

3.3. The disk totally died. How do I get flexbackup's archives off the tapes on a machine without flexbackup or even perl installed?
     Something like this, if using compression with tar/cpio/dump:

     dd if=/dev/tapedevice bs=10k | gzip -dc | tar xvf -

     replace "tar xvf -" with "restore -i -f -" or whatever. Skip the gzip pipe if you aren't using compression. afio is a bit more 
complex, you might need something like:

     afio -i -k -x -P bzip2 -Q -d -Z -v

     Check the manpages for the archive utility you used...

> 2, Each time I do a full backup does it create a new file/archive?

If writing to disk, yes. IF writing to tape, I believe it overwrites
that previous contents.


> 
> 3, Why can I not mount the drive and inspect its contents?

You need to explain what you mean? You have to mount the USB drive
in order to write your backups, so I'm confused as to what you are asking.

> 
> I was going to set up commands in my crontab to run levels fives six 
> days out of seven and then then a full each sunday night.
> 
> is this a good way of doing things?  Any comments from experienced users 
> would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Rob.
> 
> 
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> 

-- 
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2261 Market St.,
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Tel (415) 469-8649
Fax (415) 469-5044

California Registered Geophysicist
License No. GP 1034

[flexbackup-help] Using Flexbackup with a USB hard drive

[Robert W. <rob...@ro...>]

Hi,
I am getting to grips with using Flexbackup onto my USb had disk drive.  
Before i was just using the TAR command and archiving my /home directory 
onto the drive as a backup.tar.gz.  This was fine but then I decided to 
try out Flexbackup, as I have in the past used SME Server for myself and 
a number of clients I do stuff for, and I know SME uses Flexbackup.  I 
have some questions...

1, What I was trying to get my head round as does Flexbackup place its 
own version of a TAR file onto the drive? 

2, Each time I do a full backup does it create a new file/archive?

3, Why can I not mount the drive and inspect its contents?

I was going to set up commands in my crontab to run levels fives six 
days out of seven and then then a full each sunday night.

is this a good way of doing things?  Any comments from experienced users 
would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Rob.

[flexbackup-help] help with VMware images backup

[Michael P. <me...@gm...>]

Hi all-

Just got the debianized version of flexbackup working and am
experimenting around a bit with things so pardon the dust :)  I am
running debian unstable here with a 2.6.7 kernel, adaptec 2940 Ultra/W
controller and a seagate cheetah 10k 150g scsi drive.

I have a few questions about pruning and excluding various directories
or files.  I have vmware installed on my desktop and laptop and would
like to get the vmdk file backed up but its running at about 4g now
and I get messages like this in the session:

afio: "mperry/vmware/Windows XP Professional.vmdk": Cannot create
cpio-compatible file header for this input
afio: "-" [offset 1650m+418k+425]: Continuing, archive will not be
fully compatible with cpio or afio versions 2.4.7 and lower

I tried adding the directory vmware to the prune directory list but it
still seems to go there and the backup fails with an error about the
size of the vmdk file. Since the vmkd file in vmware is the entire
virtual filesystem and disk, its kinda important to me to get this
backed up.  How do others deal with vmware image files or other files
which run about 4g in size?

I can exclude the vmware directory from my backup set; but an easier
way would be to simply exclude the vmdk file or to perhaps use another
tool to write the image file to tape.

BTW, I am using flexbackup with a Ecrix VXA-1 external scsi tape drive.
-- 
Michael Perry
me...@gm...

[flexbackup-help] Red Hat 7.3 and Tandberg SLR7

[Moacyr L. da S. <mo...@gm...>]

Hi there

log fragment -- check /dev/nst0: Input/output error


|------------------------------------------------------------
| Doing level 0 backup of set etc using afio
| Retensioning tape...
| Rewinding & erasing tape...
| Creating index key 200410012139
| Backup set "etc" (/etc)
| Tape #0
|------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/nst0: Input/output error
|------------------------------------------------------------
| File number 1, tape index 200410012139
| Backup of: /etc
| Date of this level 0 backup: Fri Oct 01 21:39:39 2004
| Date of last level 0 backup: the epoch
|------------------------------------------------------------
| printf "Volume Label:\nlevel 0 /etc Fri Oct 01 21:39:39 2004
|   afio+hardware from servidor\n\n" > /tmp/label.16951
| cd "/etc" && (printf "//--/tmp/label.16951
|   flexbackup.volume_header_info\n" && find . -depth -xdev ! -type s !
|   -regex ".*/[Cc]ache/.*" ! -regex ".*~"$ -print ) | afio -o -z -1 m -v
|   -b 10k - | buffer -m 2m -p 75 -s 10k -t -u 100 -B -o "/dev/nst0"
| rm -f /tmp/label.16951
|------------------------------------------------------------
CONTROL_FILE/flexbackup.volume_header_info -- okay
sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-aliases -- okay
...
...
afio: 3m+828k+0 bytes written in 4 seconds. The operation was successful.
Kilobytes Out 3900
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Backup start: Fri Oct 01 21:39:39 2004
| Backup end:   Fri Oct 01 21:39:48 2004
|------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/nst0: Input/output error
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Rewinding...
| Removing old level 0 log of etc (dated 200410012118)
|------------------------------------------------------------

I receive /dev/nst0: Input/output error all the time, but i can
restore from the tape, already used the cleaning tape.

Any tip?!

Best Regards,
Moacyr Leite da Silva


Here is the enviroment

# uname -a
Linux servidor 2.4.18-3 #1 Thu Apr 18 07:37:53 EDT 2002 i686 unknown

# rpm -q afio flexbackup buffer
afio-2.4.7-134
flexbackup-1.2.1-1
buffer-1.19-5

# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 01 Lun: 00
  Vendor: SEAGATE  Model: ST336607LW       Rev: 0005
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 03
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 02 Lun: 00
  Vendor: TANDBERG Model: SLR7             Rev: 0550
  Type:   Sequential-Access                ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 04 Lun: 00
  Vendor: IBM-ESXS Model: DTN036C1UCDY10F  Rev: S23J
  Type:   Direct-Access                    ANSI SCSI revision: 03

# egrep -v '(^#|^$)' /etc/flexbackup.conf
$type = 'afio';
$set{'etc'} = "/etc";
$set{'home'} = "/home";
$set{'full'} = "/etc /home /disk2";
$prune{'/'} = "tmp proc mnt dev lib usr var";
$compress = 'hardware'; # one of false/gzip/bzip2/lzop/zip/compress/hardware
$compr_level = '4'; # compression level (1-9) (for gzip/bzip2/lzop/zip)
$buffer = 'buffer';         # one of false/buffer/mbuffer
$buffer_megs = '2';        # buffer memory size (in megabytes)
$buffer_fill_pct = '75';    # start writing when buffer this percent full
$buffer_pause_usec = '100'; # pause after write (tape devices only)
$device = '/dev/nst0';
$blksize = '10';
$mt_blksize = "0";
$pad_blocks = 'true';
$remoteshell = 'ssh'; # command for remote shell (rsh/ssh/ssh2)
$remoteuser = '';     # if non-null, secondary username for remote shells
$label = 'true';      # somehow store identifying label in archive?
$verbose = 'true';    # echo each file?
$sparse = 'true';     # handle sparse files?
$indexes = 'true';    # false to turn off all table-of-contents support
$staticfiles = 'false';
$atime_preserve = 'false';
$traverse_fs = 'false';
$exclude_expr[0] = '.*/[Cc]ache/.*';
$exclude_expr[1] = '.*~$';
$erase_tape_set_level_zero = 'true';
$erase_rewind_only = 'true';
$logdir = '/var/log/flexbackup';   # directory for log files
$comp_log = 'gzip';                # compress log?
false/gzip/bzip2/lzop/compress/zip
$staticlogs = 'false';             # static log filenames w/ no date stamp
$prefix = '';                      # log files will start with this prefix
$tmpdir = '/tmp';                  # used for temporary refdate files, etc
$stampdir = '/var/lib/flexbackup'; # directory for backup timestamps
$index = '/var/lib/flexbackup/index'; # DB filename for tape indexes
$keyfile = '00-index-key';         # filename for keyfile if archiving to dir
$sprefix = '';                     # stamp files will start with this prefix
$afio_nocompress_types = 'mp3 MP3 Z z gz GIF gif zip ZIP lha JPEG jpeg
jpg JPG taz tgz deb rpm bz2 lzo';
$afio_echo_block = 'false';
$afio_compress_threshold = '3';
$afio_compress_cache_size = '2';
$tar_echo_record_num = 'false';
$cpio_format = 'newc';
$dump_length = '0';
$dump_use_dumpdates = 'false';
$star_fifo = 'true';
$star_acl = 'true';
$star_format = 'exustar';
$star_echo_block_num = 'false';
$pax_format = 'ustar';
$zip_nocompress_types = 'mp3 MP3 Z z gz gif zip ZIP lha jpeg jpg JPG
taz tgz deb rpm bz2 lzo';
$pkgdelta_archive_list = 'rootonly';
$pkgdelta_archive_unowned = 'true';
$pkgdelta_archive_changed = 'true';
1;

[flexbackup-help] Flexbackup doesnt extract Backed up Files from device

[Falk G. <fal...@ab...>]

Hi List,

i have some problem with the extract option.

When I Perform this Command:

flexbackup -extract -onefile shares/schmidt/spybotsd13.exe.z

There gives only a txt log file but not the file which I want to
recover...

The output is shown as follow:


[root@pdc tmp]# flexbackup -extract -onefile
shares/schmidt/spybotsd13.exe.z

flexbackup version 1.2.1 (http://flexbackup.sourceforge.net)
/etc/flexbackup.conf syntax OK

|------------------------------------------------------------
| Checking 'buffer' on this machine... Ok
| Checking /bin/sh on this machine... bash2
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Logging output to "flexbackup.extract.200410011358.log"
| Reading from CURRENT TAPE POSITION
|------------------------------------------------------------
At block 0.
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Extracting single file shares/schmidt/spybotsd13.exe.z
| buffer -m 10m -p 75 -s 10k -t -u 100 -i "/dev/st0" | afio -i -w \
|   /tmp/extract.8308 -z -x -D /usr/bin/flexbackup -P gzip -Q -d -Q -q
-Z \
|   -v   -b 10k -
|------------------------------------------------------------

Volume Label:
level 10 /sysadmin Fri Oct 01 03:31:46 2004 afio+gzip from
pdc.bz.abu-projekt.de

CONTROL_FILE/flexbackup.volume_header_info -- okay
afio: 67k+747 bytes read in 0 seconds. The operation was successful.
Kilobytes Out 70
|------------------------------------------------------------
At block 0.
|------------------------------------------------------------

So what Im doing wrong? 

My Config file looks like this :

$set{'backup'} = "/abu-data /sysadmin";

and my crontab looks like this:

0 0 * * * flexbackup -set all -level 9
31 3 * * 1-5 flexbackup -set backup -incremental
31 3 * * 6 flexbackup -set backup -differential
31 3 1-7 * * flexbackup -wday 7 -set backup -full -type afio

Thanks for any solutions!

Falk Grosswig 

Re: [flexbackup-help] eMail when finished?

[Scott C. <sc...@bn...>]

On Tuesday 28 September 2004 02:52, Klein, Pierre wrote:
> hello, maybe somebody can tell me? is it possible to send the output of
> flexbackup via mail?

I run my flexbackup from the /etc/crontab file and the system automatically
emails the output to me.  It defaults to mailing the output to the owner of
the /etc/crontab file (which is usually root), but I believe that you can
put a MAILTO="fred" line in the file which will mail the output directly to
the user 'fred'.

Cheers,

Scott

-- 
* Scott Coburn
* Brookhaven National Laboratory
* sc...@bn... 631.344.7110
* This message brought to you by Debian Linux.

[flexbackup-help] eMail when finished?

[Klein, P. <P....@RZ...>]

hello, maybe somebody can tell me? is it possible to send the output of
flexbackup via mail?

btw...nice script :)

greetz

[flexbackup-help] Pruning obsoleted archives

[Ruben V. <li...@la...>]

Hello, 

I just started using flexbackup (and I must say it's rather enjoyable),
but I was wondering if there's a way to find out which volumes I can
safely delete (I backup my homedir to a 20Gb raid1, so I'm a bit limited
on space). Is there a way to only keep the latest three backups?

Regards,
Ruben Vermeersch
-- 
Ruben Vermeersch
http://www.Lambda1.be/

[flexbackup-help] Limiting the space Flexbackup uses

[benjymous <li...@gr...>]

I've got flexbackup set up to do daily weekly and monthly runs at 
various levels, and it all seems to be ticking away quite nicely 
(storing all the archives in an nfs mounted remote folder)

The problem is that the output folder is soft-quota'd to 1gb (which I 
estimate will take about a year to fill)

Is there any simple way I can make it automatically purge the oldest 
files to keep the folder size below a set size?

Thanks,

Richard Munn

Re: [flexbackup-help] Restoring files with flist text file.

[Scott C. <sc...@bn...>]

On Saturday 18 September 2004 23:30, Jeff Borders wrote:
> I'm been unsuccessful trying to restore just the files I need.

Jeff,

I have a small readme file I keep to remind myself how to restore files.
Here it is:

zimtok5.scott> more readme
To extract a file from an image:

(for example)

root> cd /backups/x22c/images
root> flexbackup -c ../flexbackups.conf -list home.2.2021126.afio-gz | /backups/restore/list-dir.pl valery > fred
root> vi fred
        (edit list of files, leaving only the desired file names.)
root> flexbackup -c ../flexbackup.conf -extract home.2.20021126.afio-gz -flist fred
root> rm fred *.log

zimtok5.scott>

Note that if your flexbackup.conf is not the default one in /etc then you need
to specify it on the command line.  The restored files will appear in the
directory that you ran the flexbackup -extract command in.

The 'list-dir.pl' I use is just a simple perl script which filters the output
of the flexbackup -list command and prints the lines containing a given argument,
where that argument appears in a file path.  Here it is:

zimtok5.scott> more listdir.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl

# extract list of files in a given subdirectory in the 'flexbackup -list'
# stream on sdtin.
#
# flexbackup -list afio-archive-name | listdir.pl user > files
#

use strict;

my $dir;

$dir = shift @ARGV;

while (<>) {
    chomp;
    if (/.*[\s]($dir\/.*)/) {
        print "$1\n";
    }
}
zimtok5.scott>

Hope this helps,

Scott

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* Scott Coburn
* Brookhaven National Laboratory
* sc...@bn... 631.344.7110
* This message brought to you by Debian Linux.

[flexbackup-help] Restoring files with flist text file.

[Jeff B. <je...@je...>]

I'm been unsuccessful trying to restore just the files I need.  I run
flexbackup like this:

flexbackup -extract -flist /path/flist

flist text file, called "flist":

"/home/jb/.jpilot/DatebookDB.pc3"
"/home/jb/.jpilot/DateboodDB.pdb"

I've also tried the command line like this:

flexbackup -extract -flist DatebookDB.*

No luck.  There's got to be an easier way than restoring the whole
archive.  

Jeff Borders

Re: [flexbackup-help] Restoring files to a new machine

[Simon M. <sim...@ch...>]

> I have used flexbackup to basically image my main server ie used the
> device parameter to get files ads1a, ads3e, ads4e.  These are my /,
> /var, and /usr partions and have been stored on another freebsd box in
> my internal network.  Now i have some new hardware ie a new server and
> wish to put these files (ads1a, ads3e, ads4e) on it.  This new server
> has no OS on it yet, but has been booted with the freebsd boot cd to
> create the /, /var, /usr partitions. How do i restore the files ads1a,
> ads3e, ads4e, from the remote machine to this new server with blank /,
> /var, /usr partitions. Like a ghostserver multicast type operation do
> not like to use ghost because you must turn the server off.

I'm not really sure I understand your question. Anyway, I propose
something like
- export the backup files on the old server via NFS
- boot the new one with the OS boot medium or something like FreeBSIE
- mount the exported volume from the old server and extract the archives

Simon

[flexbackup-help] Restoring files to a new machine

[RYAN v. G. <mai...@co...>]

I have used flexbackup to basically image my main server ie used the 
device parameter to get files ads1a, ads3e, ads4e.  These are my /, 
/var, and /usr partions and have been stored on another freebsd box in 
my internal network.  Now i have some new hardware ie a new server and 
wish to put these files (ads1a, ads3e, ads4e) on it.  This new server 
has no OS on it yet, but has been booted with the freebsd boot cd to 
create the /, /var, /usr partitions. How do i restore the files ads1a, 
ads3e, ads4e, from the remote machine to this new server with blank /, 
/var, /usr partitions. Like a ghostserver multicast type operation do 
not like to use ghost because you must turn the server off.

[flexbackup-help] horrible performance with disk archive restores

[Jeff B. <je...@je...>]

Hello,

I remotely manage a super fast CAD server with 2Gb of Ram and gobs of
disk space.  I perform two flexbackup backups a night.  One to an
external USB2 disk, and one to tape.  The disk backup is helpful because
they only have 5 tapes.  Anyway, the "full" backups to disk are 25-35 Gb
files.  Whenever I try to restore a file from one of these files, it
takes 5-7 hours to complete.  Running a restore from tape only takes a
fraction of this time.

Is there anything I can do to optimize the performance of this.  I'm
using RedHat 9 on this box.

no_...@je...___no_spam_please

[flexbackup-help] No Backup on Permissions Change?

[vasudeva <vas...@me...>]

I have files that often change in permissions only.  I don't need to
back these up, but flexbackup detects the permissions change and
considers them modified.  

As I'm doing differential backups, this ends up eating a lot of
tape, so I'd like to tell flexbackup to ignore permissions changes
when considering the fileset.

/etc/flexbackup.conf mentions the $atime_preserve variable which
looks like it may serve to do what I want, but not directly.  Also,
I'm using afio to archive, and it's not clear if afio respects this
flag.

Any pointers?



/></

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vasudeva.megarad.com :: For The Faint of Heart

[flexbackup-help] purging old backups

[Marc G. <mar...@ya...>]

Dear list members --

Found, downloaded and installed flexbackup earlier today, it's my first
foray in the world of backup systems. I did a full backup, and am
getting the concept of different backup levels, differential and
incrementals and so on... - thanks to an easy to use and not overloaded
backup tool.
I'm planning to back up to a pair of external USB drives - considering
tapes seem to be quite overpriced for a home user expecting to backup a
few dozen gigabytes. After moving a full backup to each disk, the most
logical strategy seems to be doing at least weekly differentials and
swapping disks, so even in the unlikely event of my system and one
backup disk failing I'd still have some stuff to be restored.
What I'm missing in flexbackup is some kind of logic that allows me to
purge backups of different levels. E.G. I'd like to keep at least one,
but not more than 2 full backups on a disk, and keeping all
differentials from the 2 full backups. Is there a way for flexbackup to
purge older backup levels automatically, or does one need to take care
of things outside? I picture I'd need differentials to a full backup
and all incrementals since the last differential - but any earlier
incrementals would be quite useless and only eating valuable disk
space.
Hope you guys would have a clue for me...


		
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[flexbackup-help] afio error

[Geoffrey G. <ge...@gm...>]

Hello,

I'm using afio to backup to tape. The backup went successfully,
however, flexbackup -list breaks with this:

flexbackup version 1.2.1 (http://flexbackup.sourceforge.net)
/etc/flexbackup.conf syntax OK

|------------------------------------------------------------
| Checking /bin/sh on this machine... bash2
|------------------------------------------------------------
| Logging output to "flexbackup.list.200408231227.log"
| Reading from CURRENT TAPE POSITION
|------------------------------------------------------------
At block 640.
|------------------------------------------------------------
| dd ibs=32k obs=32k conv=noerror if="/dev/nst0" | afio -t -z -D \
|   /usr/bin/flexbackup -P gzip -Q -d -Q -q -Z -v   -b 32k -
|------------------------------------------------------------
afio: "-": Input does not start with valid archive header.
afio: "-": Use the -k option to start reading in the middle of an archive.
afio: "-" [offset 6]: Fatal error:
afio: "-": Unrecognizable archive
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
|------------------------------------------------------------
At block 768.
|------------------------------------------------------------

How can I get a list of files on the tape to make sure the backup was
successful?

Re: [flexbackup-help] buffer not found in $PATH

[Scott C. <sc...@bn...>]

On Wednesday 18 August 2004 08:53, James Hill wrote:
> I have just installed version 1.2.1 and it looks like just what I need
> for my backup purposes. However I am getting an error output when I
> attempt any commands that communicate with the tape drive.
> 
> >    flexbackup version 1.2.1 (http://flexbackup.sourceforge.net)
> >    /etc/flexbackup.conf syntax OK
> >
> >    Errors:
> >       buffer not found in $PATH
>  
> Has anyone else had this error and found a solution?
> Have I missed something in the config file? 

James,

There is a program called 'buffer' which is used (I guess) when writing
backup images to tape.  (I don't write my images to tape so I don't use
this program.)

It seems that your config file specifies the use of this program, but
your system cannot find it when it goes looking for it.  Either it is
not installed, or it is installed but its location is not in your PATH
environment variable.

So, you need to either remove the reference from you config file, fix
your PATH, or install the buffer program.

Cheers,

Scott

-- 
* Scott Coburn
* Brookhaven National Laboratory
* sc...@bn... 631.344.7110
* This message brought to you by Debian Linux.