backups

["William M. York" <York%chuck-jones.ila-west.dialnet.symbolics.com@RELAY.CS.NET>]

    Date: Mon, 29 May 89 10:34:18 N
    From: baechler%elma.epfl.ch@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

	    As everybody we do some backups of our lisp-machines. We consider
    that it is enough to backup only the directories of the users, which are
    spread over several machines. Unhappily, the backup command refuses to put
    on a backup files which do not come from the host it is being executed.
    This forces us to do one backup by machine, what we consider a huge waste
    of tapes. I didn't find any information about how to do "simultaneously"
    several backups on the same tape. By simutaneously I mean, several backups
    done sequentially, but which co-exist on the same tape instead of replacing
    each other. I know that there is a "restart pathname" argument in the backup
    arglist, but I do not know if this is really useful for my purpose. Does
    anyone know how to do this ?

The backup dumper can only save files on the local machine because it
has intimate knowledge of the internals of LMFS and saves all the
information contained in the file system datastructures.  There is no
way to get network access to this kind of information.

You cannot string together multiple dumps on the same tape due to
limitations in the cartridge tape hardware.  Cart tapes are essentially
streaming devices; you cannot do direct-access positioning on a cart
tape.

Life sucks and then your fileserver has a head crash.