On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Tuesday 05 September 2006 05:24, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> >On Tue, 5 Sep 2006, Phil Howard wrote:
> >> On Sat, Sep 02, 2006 at 06:39:40PM -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> >> | It certainly would destroy one of amanda's features,
> >> | the ability to easily recover backup data using
> >> | standard unix utilities without amanda software.
> >>
> >> How is that destroyed?
> >>
> >> Suppose you use tar format.  You can have tar read from tape directly,
> >> which is what I presume you mean for being able to recover outside of
> >> Amanda.  You can have tar read from disk partitions if the native
> >> partition scheme is used.
> >
> >At first I had the same reaction as you: it would work fine if you would
> > cycle your tapedev through the partitions.  However, then I realized a
> > tape can store multiple `files' sequentially, while a disk partition
> > can't (without hackerish that would annihiliate the easy recovery
> > again).
> >
> >So as long as you dump only one DLE, it would work fine. If you dump more
> > than one DLE, you need more logic.
> 
> I don't know how this conclusion was reached, but IMO its wrong.
> One of the beauties of amanda is that bare metal recoveries can be done 
> with nothing more than dd, tar(or dump if that what was used) and gzip.
> 
> Its far more trouble to locate a file you want on a sequential tape than it 
> is to locate it in a vtape.  The vtape itself is nothing more than a 
> subdir in a subdir in the filesystem of the hard drive.  Switching the 
> vtapes is as simple as replacing the link to the directory called data, 
> with a new link named data that points at the desired directory.

Yes, that's true. But this discussion was about using raw partitions on a disk
instead of files on a filesystem on a disk.

Gr{oetje,eeting}s,

                                                Geert

--
Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- geert AT linux-m68k 
DOT org

In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But
when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that.
                                                            -- Linus Torvalds