system restore using cpio

[Guest_imported]

Hi all,

I would like to know what is involved in doing a full system restore from a tape backup using the cpio command. I recently tried to do a full system restore from tape and got a bunch of link error messages using the cpio command before it "bombed out" on one. When I did a test backup and restore involving linked and unlinked files the restore was completely successful.

The question is then this: Are the OS files causing the failure to restore because they are currently in use? If, so is there any way of doing a full system restore using the cpio command (or another command)?

On another note, the full system backup we currently do (using the cpio command) is stalling on the same section of the filesystem (under /u02/appl/product/....). If we press CTRL-C to end the program it resumes the backup instead. Weird. It did not do this the first time we did a system backup. Is this a sign of a corrupt block or something?

Any help is apprecited. Thanks for your time.

 

[jad]

you thought of using ufsdump and ufsrestore? or tar?

both of these have numerous advantages ... ufs for instance allows individual file restoring, with an interactive file locator (not GUI) ...

i know it's changing your routines, but we find it works a lot, lot better here.

 

[mikeclark]

I'll go along with jad. We use ufsdump for the system areas and cpio for data areas.It's easier to restore system partitians from a ufsdump.

 

[cgswong]

Thanks guys. I have been looking into ufs but have just doing some research and testing. I think I will switch over some time in the near future. Thanks for your time.

Regards.

 

[jad]

it's easier to restore specific user files with ufsrestore ...

'oh, no i've deleted xxxxx.xxx for the n'th time today ... can you get it back ...'

<groan>

<looks at history ... replays history ...>