Chris,
Thanks for your comments on the critical subject of backups. I don't think
what you say is correct. You imply that software wears out.
It does not. But hardware like tape drives does. Multi platform support does
not stop this.
So the mistake would be to trust the hardware not the software. Those old
backup tapes in perfect condition are of no use without a drive to read them
on.
If software does what you want, support is irrelevant.

We do backups using both gnutar and DLT drive and SafetyNet and DAT drive. For
sheer convenience and speed at recovery the latter beats the former hands
down.

But all of this does raise the question of what we use for backups that we
could use in 10 years time. Tape, CD or old-fashioned paper.

John


You wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2001 you (Charles R Wiles) wrote:
> > Do you know/have any references for which files can be usefully changed
> > or what the parameters mean? (We're using an older version, 2.1.5, so
> > perhaps this was a feature introduced later??).
>
> Charles, I've been using DAT pretty much since its inception in 1988, and
> I've "formed a view" of this backup business.  I accept it may not apply
> to you, but for what it's worth, here it is:
>
> The giveaway is that you're looking for a drive that will work with "this
> magnificent piece of software".  It's an old piece of software that, as
> far as I know, is no longer officially supported*.  I have a graveyard of
> such software stretching back as far as the eye can see behind me.  Many
> of the deaths can be greeted with a shrug.  Backup software is different.
> The death of a piece of backup software is potentially terrifying.
>
> So for the past four years or so I've been an exclusive GNU tar man.
> It's not as pretty, and fishing around to find what you need to restore
> can sometimes provide hours of fun.  But you always know it's there, and
> you can always get it back, and onto multiple platforms if necessary.  You
> can do remote tape backup with GNU tar and if you want to make it a bit
> more fancy and manageable you can write shell scripts around it.
>
> I don't want to provoke the old tar v. cpio debate here -- if there are
> those out there who feel cpio is more reliable, that's fine.  The same
> remarks apply.  I don't know if there's a decent cpio for NeXTStep, but
> there certainly is a GNU tar implementation.
>
> *But I could be wrong -- see <http://www.systemix.com/safetynet.htm.  The
> Web page is dated 1998.  However, at this stage in the game I really
> wouldn't want to commit any data to a proprietory format based on a
> NeXTStep app (or indeed any proprietory format, but that's a slightly
> different argument).
>
> --
> el bid