[ILUG] tar + cdrecord...

[Justin Mason]

kevin lyda said:

> i'm finally getting around to implementing real backups at home.
> copying some files to multiple hd's doesn't really count i guess.
> i'm using a cdr as the backup device and i'm wondering if anyone has ever
> just dumped a tar file directly to cdrecord - skipping the mkisofs step.
> mkisofs is better for multisession cd's i suppose so i'll go with that
> in the end i suppose, but just wondering if anyone has done it.

Only prob I could see is that if you write tars directly, you immediately
cut out the chance of being able to mount it on a non-UNIX system -- which
could be bad if you need to do a recovery.  

> anyway, someone might find it useful.  the nice thing is that restoring
> the system is as simple as reinstalling it, getting the list of rpms
> that were there before, installing all of them, and that doing a tar
> Ixpf of the tarfile.

Very nice script!  I must use it next time I have a CDR ;)

BTW one thing I'd say is that incrementals can be bad, if your media is
untrustworthy.  All of a sudden, once the master backup gets bit-rot, all
incrementals that depend on that become possibly untrustworthy too.

Shouldn't be too much of an issue with CDR's, as they're quite solid,
but DATs or other mag-tape systems can have reliability problems.

cheers!

--j.