ADSM-L

Re: 2 Kinds of Backup

1994-06-08 17:05:54
Subject: Re: 2 Kinds of Backup
From: Paul Zarnowski <VKM AT CORNELLC.CIT.CORNELL DOT EDU>
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 1994 17:05:54 EDT
On Tue, 7 Jun 1994 20:55:49 PDT Paul L. Bradshaw said:
>Arghh...this is the second time I've trapped myself on this where archive
>does not traverse the directory structure.  We will get that fixed in the
>product in a future update.
>
>Paul

Paul,

There is another significant difference between Archive and Backup for
Unix systems.  They each handle symbolic links differently.  This is very
important, since symbolic links are used heavily on many unix systems.
Backup will back up the path information associated with a symbolic link.
However, Archive will back up the file data associated with the file
pointed to by the symbolic link.  Furthermore, if the target file of a
symbolic link does not exist for some reason (this happens), ADSM Archive
will issue an error message, and exit with an error condition.

I guess I can see why a user might want Archive to treat symbolic links this
way, but I can also see a need for treating them just as Backup treats them.
In fact, I keep hearing folks (including yourself) suggest Archive as an
alternative to a snapshot backup.  Well, the way Archive works today, I
would not recommend it if you have any symbolic links on your system.

If an option could be added to ADSM Archive that would cause it to treat
symbolic links like Backup does, I think that might be very useful.

..Paul

PS: I haven't checked, but I wonder if Macintosh Alias files are handled
    the same way as Unix symbolic links.  If not, why the difference?
    They are virtually the same thing.
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