Topic: backup nightmare

[Julian Luton]

Dear E-Smithers
Like a fool I'd never got around to verifying the backup's on someone's server.
The logs indicate the backups are working fine albeit rather slowly - it's an AIT drive on a USB1 bus.
I get this when I try to do a restore

[root@server Gorgeous]# flexbackup -extract

flexbackup version 0.9.8
/etc/flexbackup.conf syntax OK

|------------------------------------------------
| Trying "mt defblksize" instead of "mt setblk"
| Reading from current tape position
|------------------------------------------------
At block 21599480.
|------------------------------------------------
| buffer -m 3m -s 10k -u 100 -t -p 75 -B -i /dev/nst0 | gzip -dq | restore -x \
|  -o -v -b 10 -f -
|------------------------------------------------
buffer (reader): failed to read input: Input/output error
buffer (reader): internal error, failed to remove semaphore: Invalid argument

gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
restore: Tape read error on first record
Verify tape and initialize maps
Input is from file/pipe
|------------------------------------------------
At block 21599480.
|------------------------------------------------
[root@server Gorgeous]#


Any hints gratefully received,
Julian Luton

[k_graham]

Which is why I hate tape - 1 error and it appears to be all gone as compared to CD's.

Depending on the value of the backup I think the suppliers of the tape may have recovery service capability.

I back my data to a workstation using winrar and a batch file and it automatically saves in 650 meg archives on which I believe I specified 2% extra for helping recover in case of a few bad sectors. Next day we copy the accounting archive to CDRW and rotate a weeks supply of CDRW's,  weekly we do the 11 or so CD's of remaining less valuable data and rotate that with an even and odd set.

I can say it works because this summer someone beat our alarm system and stole the server one night. Data was restored  to a different computer the next day right down to the correct file permissions without a hitch.

Only improvement will be to add a DVD burner and change the batch file to create 4.5 Gig archives.

Ken Graham

[Bernd]

Julian,
sorry, you are at block 21599480, isn't this a fullbackup?
why you are not at Block 0 or 1 ?

[Julian Luton]

Hi Bernd,
I was trying to restore just a couple of files, not the whole server.
Yours,
Julian