[Veritas-bu] TIR restore issues (last time)

 Hi folks.

 I just thought I would try to get some clarification on TIR restores
 one last time.  From the testing I've done, I've come to the conclusion
 that it is not possible to restore more than one filesystem at a time
 when performing a TIR restore (at least with NetBackup 3.4).  Is there 
 anyone on this list that is can confirm this for me?  The documentation
 is pretty much non-existent regarding these issues.  

 Additionally I'm wondering if there are any improvements in the 4.x 
 release of NetBackup related to performing TIR restores?  At this point,
 I'm considering the possibility on an alternate backup product as the
 restore process seems way too involved for an operations staff to deal
 with.  It just seems like anymore that to make this product usable, you
 pretty much have to build scripts for each component that you want to use.

 For TIR restores using the java interface, there are a number of issues.
 If you select 'Most recent since last full backup' and your fulls are 
 older that a week old, you receive a message that nothing matched your
 select criteria.  Even after setting the 'INITIAL_BROWSE_SEARCH_LIMIT' 
 to a range that would include the fulls, the same behavior is exhibited.
 Although once you manually set a start date via the 'All backups between'
 option, and then go back and select 'Most recent ...' the option works.
 From what I can tell, the 'Most recent ...' option should be totally
 disabled for TIR restores, as it will only operate on files associated
 with a backup for a specific filesystem which was the last to be backed up
 (e.g. not all filesystems).  In order to determine which filesystem that
 is, you have basically select the '.' directory off the root and then
 go hunting through the directory to see which filesystem is selected.

 If you actually perform your selection using a date range, it appears
 that the first filesystem you select is pretty much all that will get
 restored.  Such as if you first select the '/var/' partition for a given 
 date, and then select other directories from other partitions, the only
 thing that is restored is the '/var/' partition.
 
 From the command line, using 'bprestore' for each filesystem you first
 have to determine the exact date/time for each filesystem using a command
 sequence like,

        # bplist -b -l -s <start date> -Listseconds <filesystem>
 
 then initiate the restore using the date/time from output of the above command,

        # bprestore -K -H -T -L /tmp/restore.log -R /tmp/restore.map \
                -e <date/time> -C <client-name> -S <server-name> <filesystem>

 and basically repeat this process for each filesytem.  Currently this seems
 like the most straight forward method, although if you have a large number of
 filesystems, this can be a fairly meticulous process.
  
 IHMO it seems like NetBackup has some great facilities for performing backups,
 but the restore side of things needs some definite work in the area of 
usability.
 So before I start looking at other products or writing some wrappers for 
bprestore,
 I just wanted to check to see if this has improved with 4.x or alternatively, 
if
 there is some approach that I'm missing here?

 Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 Thanks,

 John Meyers
 Computing Services
 Wright State University
 E-mail: john.meyers AT wright DOT edu