[geeks] Well, THAT was a setback

[der Mouse]

>>> I'd strongly recommend staging the backups to disk.  [...]
>> Given how much RAM "modern" machines tend to have, you might
>> consider queueing data in RAM [and bursting to tape in eg gigs]
> Well, there *is* that, I suppose.  But modifying Bacula to add a
> spool-to-RAM feature seems a heck of a lot of trouble to go to in
> order to not really solve an underlying problem of insufficient
> network bandwidth.

Well...I'm not sure I'd say it's "insufficient".  It's insufficient
only to keep the tape streaming for indefinitely long times, and I'm
not convinced that's necessary.  At work, our backup machine does just
fine with 100Mb - it dumps everything to disk files (amanda "virtual
tapes"), but with a gig or so of buffer it could burst to a tape drive
just fine.

As for modifying Bacula, well, (a) perhaps that means Bacula isn't a
good choice for you, and (b) maybe telling Bacula it's got a buffer
area, which happens to actually be a ramdisk, would work?

> I hate applying band-aids - especially complex, labor-intensive
> band-aids - that don't actually address the underlying problem.

Ah, but what _is_ the underlying problem?  That's a serious question.
Decide what you want to do before you try to do it.  If your goal is to
stop shoeshining, for example, then this does fine.

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