[rescue] Mounting and Dumping

[Janet L. Campbell]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:

> reliable manner?  In 1983 I wrote a backup program for CP/M, in BASIC, that
> would back up any size of hard drive, to any number of floppy disks, and
> arrange the files to fill the floppies as full as possible.  If I could do
> that, why can't the guys at [Sun|Microsoft|wherever] do something better
> twenty years later?

A lot of it is just inertia.  "star" does seem to do a great job, and 
addresses most of the shortcomings I've found with vendor or GNU tar.  It 
correctly handles virtually all of the issues mentioned in that page.

Some problems (like fs consistancy) are not easily solvable from within a 
backup program.  Some problems are just vendor lousiness.

> Hmmm.  Yeah, but then where's ufsdump gonna write its log entries?

You can get pretty creative with moving around syslog output, though not
many people do.

> I wish I'd had the wit to save a deck of CRAM cards and a couple of miles of
> paper tape from my first job in "DP."  My merely explaining real core memory
> or a CRAM unit doesn't have the same impact as the PFY's seeing one in the
> flesh ...

When I worked as an operator, I handled a lot of 9-track (and the 
occasional 7-track) tape.  I kept a write ring on my desk for years at 
later jobs, and it was always interesting watching to see who recognized 
it when they saw it.  It made a decent clue-yardstick.

When I gave away my 11/750 in 1995, my TU78 and TU77 went with it.  They 
really were amazing works of engineering.  The HP 88780 I got later just 
didn't compare, though at least it would fit on a desk.

Somewhere in a storage shed I've got an original source distribution of V7 
on reel.  Maybe it's a collector's item by now.

-Janet