ORIGINAL MESSAGE
have the misfortune of being stuck with a DEC UNIX box and nsr.
On a real operating system like HP-UX, I can do backups or recovers using
the fbackup or frecover verbs, a few switches, and a single graph file.
That's all I need to do anything with a backup or recover operation.
To set up the same thing on DEC UNIX to do backups from cron, I have to
1) Choose from nsr, nsrmm, or any one of 20 other poorly documented verbs
1)setup ridiculous .nsr files in all the different directories to exclude or
include files. On an HP system, all I have to do is use a -g option to
specify a graph file which tells exactly which directories/files to include
or exclude. That's right, a single file placed anywhere that I want that is
simple to modify.
2) The man page for 'nsr' and 'save' make no mention of how to specify the
backup device from the command line. On an HP system with fbackup, all I
have to do is put a -f switch on the command line with fbackup to tell it
which of several tape drives to go to.
Are there any alternatives to nsr on the DEC system. Anything that is
decently documented and command line friendly. Anything but nsr.
DEC ALPHA 4100
dec unix 4.0b
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SUMMARY
Thanks to all for the quick response. I had a dozen or so within 30minutes.
1) The mail ran about 50% in agreeing with me that NSR is worthless while
the rest either praised it heartily or said that it was better than anything
else they had tried even though there were things they still disliked about
it.
2) Three main alternatives were mentioned vdump and restore, amanda, and
BRU (backup restore utility), -- along with tar and cpio.
3) I just got off the phone with EnhancedSoftwareTechnologies in Phoenix
that writes the BRU product. It sounds like exactly what I'm looking for.
Some additional notes
-- I am backing up a single machine with an 8mmExabyte and a DLT Jukebox
attached.
-- I needed something that I could easily put into cron command line
-- I needed something that I could run on a wyse60 terminal emulation -- NOT
something that required Xwindows
Following are cuts from two of the replies that were pretty representative
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BRU - all command-line driven, simple to define devices... Not sure
where we got ours, but it has to be on the web somewhere.
(EnhancedSoftwareTechnologies, Phoenix AZ)
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I have the same HW/OS setup. PLEASE! Let me know if you find anything.
I'm desperately looking to get rid of nsr. The current leader in my
mind is Amanda (I've used it successfully on Suns).
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My experience with NSR is that it is a very good, very robust,
very configurable utility. Yes, you need to learn how to use it
properly, just like anything else.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
There are a variety of other choices for backup software, my recommendation
is to give nsr a reasonable try. It was superior to the other products
we evaluated 3+ years ago.
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Dale Inman
Unix Systems Admin
Aladdin Industries
615-748-3242 v.
615-748-3030 f.
Received on Wed Apr 15 1998 - 23:36:00 NZST