[lug] Backing up on a Sun tape drive

[Michael J. Hammel]

Thus spoke Scott T. Kelley
> 1) I need to make backups from my linux box to a tape drive attached to =
> a Sun machine running Solaris. Is there a simple way to dump files =
> across the network without first transferring them to the Sun? It =

NFS mounts may work, depending on the amount of data and time it takes to
do the backups.

> doesn't have enough hard drive space to take much at all. I also would =
> like to do this with an SGI to that same tape drive (once I get it =
> running again). I tried mounting the linux file system onto the Sun but =
> I had problems the /etc/vfstab and probably didn't configure it =
> correctly. Is that even the way to go with this?

On Solaris, at least for the past 2 years (and maybe longer), NFS mount
points are placed under /etc/dfs/dfstab.  Or at least I think that's it.
It's been close to 2 years since I played on a Solaris box.  Anyway, I'm
pretty sure the filename is dfstab for NFS mounts.  Try the "showmount" man
page on the Solaris box and see if that says anything useful.

> 2) Our SGI recently got wiped (and I mean *wiped*) kernal and all by a =
> network intruder. However, there was a (hopefully) complete backup made =
> some time ago by a former lab mates on the same tape drive mentioned =
> above. In this case I would like to restore the whole thing again across =
> the network if possible but I am not sure where to begin with this task.

Again, NFS might work if the data backed up was just user data.  If it's
kernel configuration stuff (ie stuff required to boot the system) then
you'd need something local to build the disk first.  I'm not positive about
that since I've never had to do this (and it's been even longer since I
played with an SGI), so your mileage may vary.

-- 
Michael J. Hammel                               The Graphics Muse 
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org                      http://www.graphics-muse.com
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