[Veritas-bu] Named Pipe Backup - bpbkar documentation?

Thu, Apr 07, 2005 at 11:30:02AM -0400 or thereabouts, Mickey Baker wrote:
> I'm working on a project where we'd like to backup data sent to a named
> pipe on a UNIX system. I know that I can do this with bpbkar, if I can
> get the switches right, but alas, I find no documentation for this. 
> 
> Can anyone point me to or send me any information on usage for bpbkar?
> Is there another way within NetBackup for backing up from a named pipe?


Mickey-

You absolutely DO NOT want to be doing backups by running
the bpbkar command directly.  

If you somehow managed to puzzle out some sort of syntax 
to achieve this, I'm impressed but I challenge you to 
RESTORE that backup you just made.

Bpbkar is just NOT designed to do what you're describing.

But don't get me wrong.... NBU *does* support backing up 
named pipes aka "fifos".  Alas, it's not very well
documented.  (http://support.veritas.com/docs/258414 is
definitely useful information on the topic, but it's not 
an end-to-end explanation of how to back up and restore 
a fifo file)

Here's one example of how to do this, with a simple fifo
called "/etc/test-fifo":

==========
(1) configure a backup policy to back up /etc/test-fifo.
NOTE1: you must explicitly specify the fifo file here- 
if you back up /etc/ instead, the backup will not capture 
the fifo contents when it backs up the /etc/test-fifo file. 

(2) on the backup client, create your fifo file using mknod 
or mkfifo, e.g.  "mkfifo /etc/test-fifo"

(3) on the backup client, start whatever process does the 
WRITING to the fifo, e.g. "cat /etc/hosts > /etc/test-fifo".  
This command is going to sit and hang until some process 
(i.e. your backup) comes along and reads from /etc/test-fifo.  
Such is the nature of a fifo.  :-)

(4) run the backup policy from step (1), using the GUI or 
bpbackup command.

(5) Once the backup completes successfully, initiate the 
restore of the fifo, using the GUI or bprestore.
(NOTE2: this restore must be configured as a "raw partition"
restore)

(6) start your command to READ from the restored fifo file,
e.g. "cat /etc/test-fifo"

(7) once the restore starts writing to /etc/test-fifo, your
read command in step (6) will receive the data.
=========

HTH
rob