Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 17:27:46 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: mkb@incubus.de (Matthias Buelow) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Partition Size Message-ID: <200501252227.j0PMRk329814@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <41F6BBE3.3090909@incubus.de> from "Matthias Buelow" at Jan 25, 2005 10:36:35 PM
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> > Jerry McAllister wrote: > > > This 'rest of the disk' should be divided up into chunks that can > > be dump(8)ed to one backup media if possible. Otherwise you will > > get sloppy and not do backups because it is harder. Since there is a > > What kind of nonsense is this? I've never heard about such an advise, > and it doesn't make sense to me. Surely dumping a filesystem to > multiple tapes isn't more, most likely less, effort than dumping n > filesystems to one tape each. The only case this doesn't hold is when > you're using amanda, but that's hardly a home setup, and comes with a > special backup discipline anyways. Actually, I doubt that many people > use tape backup at home, considering how outrageously expensive the > stuff is, and the inexpensiveness of usb disks these days, which are a > lot easier to handle than tapes. Just based on experience with a number of sites who use our systems. If it gets any more complicated than shoving in one tape and typing one command, they put it off and don't get around to it until it generally doesn't get done at all. Having to come back and put in another tape and respond to a prompt seems to be something that makes it too complicated. It is reasonably easy to create a script that will dump a series of file systems to single tapes by just having it ask which one to do each time. This seems to make more sense to some people, especially those without much experience (yet) in the process than keeping track of prompts to put in the next media unit. Of course a stacker is nice. But, the beginner is not likely to have that. If you have no problem plugging in a sequence of tapes and keeping track of them, then skip the chunking, for sure. Personally, I prefer to make a much bigger filesystem - even stripe more than one drive together - except I can't really afford much hardware for my personal use right now. Anyway, it doesn't seem all that complicated to me either. This is just experience with startups and harrassed site managers talking. If you are running a really big server system, then chunking disk space to fit backup media would really be a pain. But, then, someone running a really big system is likely to have enough experience to not be intimidated by multi-tape or DVD or whatever dumps and also would not be asking the questions that the poster did. Those people would have already worked out their stuff and probably are doing something like mirroring or raid 5-ing or running a continuous crawl backup process or whatever else they think up. And, if you aren't using tapes, well make it work out well for whatever you are doing. Mirrors are not infallible, but then neither are tapes. So, choose your poisen and hope the antidote works. ////jerry > > mkb. > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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