[rescue] Tape Backup

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Sheldon T. Hall wrote:


> Of course, the SGI seems to have another problem in this regard, as IRIX's
> CD player application won't play CDs, either, regardless of the CD-ROM drive
> I use.  I haven't had time to chase down the problems.

Plextor CD-ROM SCSI drives use a different command set than anyone else.
Ditch cdrecord and use cdrdao. Note that for some strange reason on LINUX
cdrdao run as root fails while run as a user does not. It seems that POSIX
real time scheduling is broken, or cdrdao's use of it is.

CDRDAO will copy an entire audio cd and write it back without adding
gaps between tracks. You can also use it to write VCDs (video cd's) if
you have the appropriate MPEG-1 files and make an image using vcdimager.

To write pure data CD's, you need to create a TOC (table of contents
file). The simplest is:

	CD_ROM
	TRACK MODE1
	DATAFILE "mp3.raw"

Where mp3.raw is the ISO immage you want to write.
 
> If you have any idea about neat-o backup scripts using cdrecord, I'm all
> ears.

No, I don't know of any because AFIK all CD's are written at once, so
you have to have built an image of the CD before you do it.

This could be done with a PERL program to create a link to each file
in a directory in temp and then build an iso9660 immage using mkisofs.

for example:

	mkisofs -J  -f -l -L -R -r  -v -o mp3.raw /tmp/tmp_cd_dir/  

Where /tmp/tmp_cd_dir/ is a directory containing a directory hireachry
and SYMLINKS to the real files. The above combination of flags creates
a Joliet extension ISO9660 file system so the long names can be read
on windows and Linux (I'm not sure about Irix) and dumps the files
symlinks point to instead of the links themselves.

Note that ISO9660 file systems have some limitations and if you have
pipes, really long file names, need permissions copied, etc, make
a tar file instead. You'll still have to make an image before you write
it.

I also have a nice perl program that creates tar files of Outlook 
Express mailboxes and other wanted files from windows machines. 
It uses the SAMBA suite of programs which I believe are ported to Irix.

It needs to know if the machine you are dumping is NT (or I guess w2k or
XP) or 95/98/me as the mailboxes are in a different place. 

I'm not an outlook express fan, but my wife is, so I had to be able to
backup up her files. I run a backup at 8am each day via cron and then
once in a while dump them to CD.

> > Actually what I mean to say is that you may want to be able to access
> > just one file rather than having to wade through an entire dump.

Naw, what's the fun in that. If you have a DAT drive that takes 12 hours
to spin through a tape you can't wait? Just kidding, try it once and
you'll want backups that are random access.

Geoff.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson
Bloomberg L.P., BFM (Israel) 2 hours ahead of London, 7 hours ahead of New York.
Tel:  972-(0)3-754-1158 Fax 972-(0)3-754-1236 Email: gmendelson at bloomberg.com