On Tue, May 08, 2007 at 09:42:52AM +0700, Olivier Nicole wrote:
> > I've been tasked with "guaranteeing" that the backup vtapes or in the
> > future real tapes are "good."  So I found the command amverify that
> > seems to be the correct routine but I want to know does it completely
> > check the archive and the files contained within?  
> 
> Amverify will try to extract any backup from the backup media,
> uncompress the files and see if they are readable.
> 
> By no mean amverify will conduct a comparison file by file, for the
> simple reason that we are talking about live system and the files will
> have change between the moment they were backuped and the moment they
> are verified, so the verification would always show non-matching
> files, so you could not say anything about the correctness of your
> backup.
> 

If the backup were done on a snapshot this objection "might"
be worked around.

Another reason a general procedure for verification does not
exist is that the backups are not done by the server, they
are done by the clients.  The backup, compression, encryption,
etc. programs are all over there.  The same programs may not
even exist on the server.  So the dump would have to be extracted
from the backup medium, transfered across the network to the
client, expanded from the archive, and compared to the files
on the client.

-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                  jon AT jgcomp DOT com
 JG Computing
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