[drogomoss]

Dear All,

Good day.

I'd like to ask for anybody's input, suggestions and criticisms on a task assigned to me. Here goes:

I am assigned to backup multiple archives on an 8mm tape. Our box is an RS6000 running on AIX 5.2. The request was to create an incremental backup of a particular folder named: Prodbkp
So at the end of the week, a tape contains 7 sets of data.

This was how I did it.

1. All involved files were tar'd and gzip'd
2. Gzip'd files moved to folder: Prodbkp
3. File counter moved to last file using: tctl fsf [filecounter]
4. Folder Prodbkp was then tar'd directly to the 8mm tape (IBM Mammoth Tape 60.0 Gig M2 - 7208 345) using the no rewind device: /dev/rmt0.1
5. Steps 1 to 4 are repeated day to take into account file changes

NOTE: this is planned to cronned every 11PM of every night.


My questions:
1. During restoring or writing, I always need to determine which file counter to use. When the number of files increase I lose count. Is there a way to catalog the tape to show a printout of the files contained.

2. Is there a better way to do this backup? It's very inefficient.

Any inputs are warmly appreciated.

Thanks,

drogo