[Info-vax] Backing up scattered files

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article
<a574a053-58ee-49bc-ace1-a6f9737a8725 at m13g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,
Rich Jordan <jordan at ccs4vms.com> writes: 

> An old request just came up again; we need to back up a group of
> several dozen files, scattered across multiple directories on one
> disk, into a single saveset on a schedule; quiescing the apps is
> handled beforehand.  This is on an Alpha V7.3 system, no upgrade
> possible.  The filenames and paths vary enough that even wildcarding
> won't get the input spec to a valid size.
> 
> It occurred that I could set up an a new directory and create a file
> entry for each of the desired files in it, regardless of the source
> directories (on the same disk).  Then backup [newdir]*.* to the
> saveset. The docs recommend caution though.
> 
> The path and filenames in the saveset would be 'wrong' from the point
> of view of the production system, 

But if it is just a few dozen, and you are concerned with the contents, 
then you can presumably sort out the names, right?

> and I still need to do one saveset
> per source disk that way, 

Right, but you say above that it is just one disk.

> but any reason why this would not work?

Maybe.

> Restoring the files would also need to be tested.

This should be easy: just create a directory and dump the files into it. 
They will have no relation with the "real" files.

> I expect it might be a good idea to SET FILE/ENTER create the file
> entries, perform the backups, and SET FILE/REMOVE the entries as part
> of the same procedure so I don't leave 'unexpected' files around for
> someone who doesn't know the system to delete to 'recover space' or
> the like.

Definitely.

Some things to consider:

   Do you have files with the same name in different directories?

   Are the files large?  Why not just back up the files individually to
   a scratch directory, then create the saveset from that?  Then no 
   worries about SET FILE?  Why not just back up the files individually,
   rather than into a saveset?

   What about ZIP?  Since ZIP can also compress the files and allows one
   to efficiently extract individual files from the archive, and works
   fine on VMS (be sure to get at least ZIP 3.0 and UNZIP 6.0), it might
   be the better tool for this job.  Unless you want to create a logical
   disk from an /IMAGE backup (which is not what you are doing here),
   is there a reason to prefer BACKUP to ZIP at all in this case?