After restoring a workstation with several drives from a total of 5
different tapes, and each filesystem being on at least two of them, it
occurred to me that there *has* to be a better way to restore multiple
filesystems.

Ideally, I'd like to see a system where a user could browse an entire host's
contents with amrecover or a close derivative, select as many files as
desired, then:

 1) amrecover would collate a list of every tape needed to recover every
    selected file,
 2) amrecover would prompt for each one in turn, as it currently does, with
    the exception that it would extract files for every relevant filesystem
    stored on that tape, in order

Example:

A user has 4 tapes, and backs up /, /usr, /home, and /var on a given host.

 /     is on Tape1 and Tape4
 /usr  is on Tape2 and Tape4
 /home is on Tape1, Tape3, and Tape4
 /var  is on Tape4

1) amrecover (launched from the host's root directory) would prompt for
Tape1, and would extract the contents of / and /home from that tape.
2) It would ask for Tape2, and would extract /usr.

3) It would prompt for Tape3, and would extract /home.

4) Finally, it would prompt for Tape4, and would extract /, /usr, /home, and
/var.

This would be a radical improvement over the current process, as implemented
by me last week:

1) cd /; launch amrecover; insert Tape1; insert Tape4

2) cd /usr; launch amrecover; insert Tape2; insert Tape4

3) cd /home; launch amrecover; insert Tape1; insert Tape3; insert Tape4

4) cd /var; launch amrecover; insert Tape4

Does this seem like a workable possibility?

P.S.  If it already exists and I missed it, I am fully prepared to dine on
my cap.
-- 
Kirk Strauser
In Googlis non est, ergo non est.

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