backing up to scsi disk?

[rwk@crl.dec.com (Robert W. Kerns)]

    Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1991 19:16-0400
    From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
    Actually, what would be nice would be an option to dump and restore
    to/from ordinary files.  I could then dump to an ordinary Unix file or a
    file on our optical disk jukebox.  I once tried to make use of some of
    the code I saw in the dumper source to redirect the dumper stream to a
    file stream, but it didn't work; the dumper sends messages that are only
    implemented by the tape stream flavors.

But I believe (without trying it or looking at the dumper code to
refresh my memory), that they're the same as the messages accepted
by si:embedded-length-8-bit-output-stream and
si:embedded-length-8-bit-input-stream.  This accepts all of the
messages I remember from the tape/RTAPE protocol.

It would seem straightforward to me (again, without checking
the dumper) to adapt the LMFS backup dumper (and reloader)
to use this stream instead of calling TAPE:MAKE-STREAM.

Even better, once you've done this, it would seem very easy
to set up the backup to *AUTOMATICALLY* perform backups to
a LMFS filesystem.  Say, an incremental every hour, a daily
consolodated, a weekly consolidated, and a monthly full,
keeping each backup through one cycle of the next level up.
Thus, even the tape reuse cycle could be managed, as a real
backup system should be able to do.  (Not that I've *EVER*
seen a real backup system on any host; Retrospect on the Mac
comes closest, if you work at it).

We won't mention Unix.