Linux backup

[Malcolm Kay]

On Thursday 19 August 2004 21:55, Malcolm Kay wrote:
....
>
> Yesterday I ran this for the first time on one of the Linux
> machines and found the backup aborted with the following
> error in the log file:
>    /bin/tar: /home/thi/OM5438/test.hir1: file changed as we read it
>    /bin/tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
>    Backup /data/pstar/root-0-z.tgz FAILED at Wed 18 Aug 2004 15:29:20 CST
>
> So 'dump' leads to corrupt backups, 'tar' leads to aborted backups.
> The abort message is undoubtably correct -- the file in question is a
> temporary file used during circuit simulation analysis. Individual
> simululation runs can take from a few second upto a week. So it is not
> practical to close down everything for backup. (If it was then
> partitions could be dismounted for backup and the principal problem
> espoused for 'dump' would disappear.) Such files are not crucial to the
> backup. If tar simply skipped them or indicated that they were corrupt
> in the archive while correctly preserving the rest of the file system
> then this would be satisfactory -- but instead it aborts.
>
....

Rethinking this perhaps I've been too hasty -- maybe tar has completed 
a satisfactory archive. The script in which it is embedded discards
the output in the case of an error exit -- but this could be changed.
I guess some further analysis of the error messages is needed to
assess whether the archive is acceptable or needs to be discarded.

Any comments?

Malcolm Kay