Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] tape backup to a mac

From: Bob Atkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 00:44:19 -0700 (PDT)

> Bruce Feist wrote:
>
> I'm with Danny on this one -- Retrospect on the Mac is an incredibly good
> program; it has built-in scheduling and tracking features.  It already
> supports Mac and PC clients using TCP/IP; in a conversation with their tech
> support staff, I found out that at one point they had a Unix client,
> although I don't think it was ever marketed.  I wish they would.
> 

While Retrospect may be a good product it is a proprietary product and
it is fairly expensive.

Because it is proprietary it doesn't use the standard Unix rmt service
and requires yet more (turns out also not yet available) custom
software/license keys/conflicts/configuration/admin hassles, etc. on my
Unix system. A Mac backup application that uses the Unix rmt service
would be very simple to do.The actual backup application does not have
to have scheduling built in. Using the CronMgr (available for the Mac)
you could create any backup schedule your heart desires.

It would be nice if such a backup application would work similarly to
Unix's ufsdump (aka. dump) which writes the entire directory contents
info at the beginning of the tape rather than throughout (interspersed
between files). This would make it *very* easy to select and restore
individual files/directories without having to search the entire tape(s)
just to get a complete directory listing from which to select files or
directories to be restored.

If anyone is up to writing such an application I may even fund the
development.

---
Bob Atkins

> Bob Atkins wrote:
> 
> > Actually what would be way cool is if someone developed a backup
> > utility for the Mac that used the Unix rmt(1M) (remote magnetic tape)
> > facility. rmt is incredibly simple to use and it would make network
> > backups of Macs and PCs a breeze.
> >
> > >
> > > Hello, I was wondering if there is a way to do tape backups from my
> > > linux box to a tape drive connected to a mac.  The mac is connected to
> > > the internet and on an apple talk network.  The tape drive is an APS
> > > hyperdat 2 scsi.  The client software for backups on that mac is
> > > retrospect 3.0.  I was thinking there might be something like "pap"
> > > for doing tape backups.  That would be cool.
> > >
> > > Danny Rice
> > >
> >
> > ---
> > Bob
> 
>

---

From: Sak Wathanasin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 20:03:47 +0100

In reply to Bob Atkins's message of the 17/05/99 at 00:44 -0700,

> While Retrospect may be a good product it is a proprietary product and

It's not cheap, but it's not that expensive either, and costs a lot less than
losing all my data.

> A Mac backup application that uses the Unix rmt service
> would be very simple to do

Oh, I don't know... You can probably do 90% easily, but then come the hard bits
like backing up and restoring all the Finder info and the boot blocks. With
Retrospect if you munge a disk, you can pull it out, put in a new one,
low-level format it, do a volume restore and you have an exact copy of the
pre-munged disk, including the icon and window positions of every file and
folder, the AppleShare priviledges (if any) and the boot blocks*. Pulling off
this trick with rmt would be interesting... I'm not saying it can't be done -
Retrospect clearly can with its "FTP backup" -, only that it's not as easy as
you make it out to be.

[* You are probably thinking that the disk formatter would do this. Some can,
but even so, you run the risk of not getting the same vintage of boot blocks as
the system that was on the munged disk. This matters a lot less these days
(ever since Apple introduced "universal" bootable systems), but it can still
bite you.]
Sak Wathanasin
Network Analysis Limited
178 Wainbody Ave South, Coventry CV3 6BX, UK

Internet: [email-masked]
Phone: (+44) 1203 419996                    Fax: (+44) 1203 690690

---

From: Craig A Summerhill <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 01:22:39 -0400 (EDT)

> While Retrospect may be a good product it is a proprietary product and
[snip]
> If anyone is up to writing such an application I may even fund the

Bob,

It is safe to assume that you will find such an effort up to (but 
not in excess of) the cost of licensing Retrospect?  B^)

At a price of $149 for the base product and 10 client packs for $170
(Mac Zone prices), I don't personally find Retrospect to be a "fairly
expensive" program...  As a not-for-profit corporation, we're hardly
rolling in cash.  Retrospect works fine for us.
-- 

   Craig A. Summerhill, Systems Coordinator and Program Officer
   Coalition for Networked Information
   21 Dupont Circle, N.W., Washington, D.C.   20036
   Internet: [email-masked]   AT&Tnet (202) 296-5098

---

From: Ethan Benatan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 13:39:49 GMT

I understand not liking proprietary backup solutions, coming from the
unix world; the ones that I have seen really don't offer anything
beyond what the free ones do, and none that I have seen are really
very sophisticated.

Coming from the Mac world (and I have to say that one of the things I
like about this list is that most of us have feet in both camps) we
have different expectations.  A backup program should just *work*,
with a short learning curve, and it should have very good error
detection, reporting, and recovery.  Retrospect doesn't just write to
tape; it handles a lot of complexity under a simple user interface.

The thing I care most about in a backup program is reliability: it has
to work, and even more important (since everything fails, see the
second law of thermodynamics) is that it detect and report failures
and maintain the integrity of my backups.  Retrospect does all this
and much more, including excellent media management, sophisticated
scheduling, and great client management.  I can literally pop a CD in
any Mac on my network, boot it up, and restore it to *any historical
state* of *any Mac* that I have on tape with about 2 minutes of work.
I can browse through the catalog and find multiple old versions of
files to recover.  Bottom line: it makes my life simpler.  And it is
not particularly expensive: the software cost is about 2% of the cost
of the machine, for a midsize network*.  How many hours do you have to
save to make it worth $30?  I would dearly love to see (and would pay
for without hesitation) a unix client for Retrospect.

*20 $1500 machines for about $600 worth of software (retrospect plus two
10-packs).

Disclosure: I am a Dantz-certified retrospect partner- I don't sell
it, but I do support it.  

Ethan
_____________
Ethan Benatan       [email-masked]         http://www.pitt.edu/~ethan