Topic: flexbackup from hell

[Mark]

Hi
a customer is backing up about 5-6 gigs data to a dds2 tape
logs say backup is fine
i can view file lists for the /boot partion but not the root partition and get the following errors if I try and extract some files

| buffer -m 3m -s 10k -u 100 -t -p 75 -B -i /dev/nst0 | gzip -dq | restore -i \
|  -v -b 10 -f -
|------------------------------------------------
gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated
restore: Cannot find file dump list
Verify tape and initialize maps
Dump   date: Wed May 29 11:59:05 2002
Dumped from: the epoch
Level 0 dump of /home/e-smith/files/users on mainserver:/dev/sdb1
Label: none
End-of-tape encountered
|------------------------------------------------
At block 87014.
|------------------------------------------------

if i try the same commands at home on my test box it all works fine

ny suggestions would be appreciated

cheers

Mark

[Dan]

You say you tried the same commands and they worked for you... did you use his tape and tape drive?  It could be hardware.

[Mark]

Hi Dan - Thanks for responding ...

I have tried to list / extract the files on another dds2 drive and it can't read the first file on the tapes either (same error). It can however read the second file on the tape ( the dump of /boot).I am actually wanting to replace the dds2 drive with a dds3 but don't want to shut down the server without some form of verifiable backup. Backup to desktop fails at 2gb (all their machines are 2k with fat32 partitions(yuck). I tried to map a smb share and do a copy of /home but got so many permissions errors I wasn't confident of the quality of the backup.


cheers

Mark

[nick]

Hi Mark.
I would like to know the outcome as I'm very interested in all backup errors
Regards
Nick

[grrrrrr]

I can't take credit for this but I found the following in the archives, which fixes my problem with flexbackup:

"I'm still testing but I think I've found a solution, in the file cron.d I've added a line in between the line that the console makes when you enable tape backup.
The line I've added is the following:

15 19 * * * root flexbackup -newtape

This erases the tape and makes a new index on the tape the reminder message is sent at 19.10 and the backup starts at 19.20.
I didn't set the option erase_rewind_only false according to the flexbackup-howto because the line I've added takes care of this.
My test server made two succesfull backups on different dates, and I'm waiting for the third to start, I'll let you know how this topic will end."

This was great until I restored from backup, then the /etc/cron.d/backup file reverted to the original and it all came undone again.

[brian read]

Add a custom template, not the actual  /etc/crontab.

See:

http://www.e-smith.org/custom/

cheers

Brian

[guck puppy]

I realise this is a bit of a "me too" - but this problem with flexbackups not backing up caused me a fair bit of pain too.

My solution was to add in a direct call to "mt erase" in the cron, before the backup occurs. I wonder if there's any particular advantage to using "flexbackup -newtape" instead?

G