[geeks] Linux tape backup help

[Phil Stracchino]

> On Fri, 15 Jan 2010, Dr. Robert Pasken 300a wrote (in a message I never received):
> 
>> Bacula is NOT a solution to much of anything. My brother works with
>> Bacula and he fights with it daily. It is overly complex to the level of
>> bloatware.  IF and ONLY IF you are working with a large company with
>> 10's of thousands of unix work stations, multiple maxed M9000 servers
>> and multiple SL3000's tape libraries bacula  would provide a FOSS
>> alternative to pay software, but even then I would think 30 times before
>> trying bacula

I have to say that if your brother is having that much trouble with it,
and he's NOT using a huge installation with multiple Catalogs and
Directors, then he's doing it wrong.  I've been using it since 2001, and
unless you're trying to push the bleeding edge or use problematic
features like writing DVDs directly[1], once set up correctly It Just Works.


[1]  A feature which is technically present in the code, but unsupported
and strongly discouraged because it's very difficult to make it work
reliably.  The recommended method of backing up to DVD with Bacula is to
set up Bacula to write DVD-sized volumes on disk, then call an external
script to burn them to DVD as a separate operation.

-- 
  Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
  alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
         Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                 It's not the years, it's the mileage.