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floppybackup
by veijalai@cc.lut.fi (see NOTES section below!!!)
WHY?
Why would anyone still use floppies for backupping? Lack of $$$$$, that's
why.
This little package was hacked together because all the more
sophisticated backup systems were more suited for tape drives and such,
and even if they supported floppies, verify mode was either lacking or
missing, and mixed-size floppies caused problems.
I've backupped lots of my sources and ms-dos stuff (all the dos/win
backup software I've seen sucks in one way or other) with floppybackup,
and even done some restoring of data. No problems so far.
It is suggested that you backup everything once, then do incremental
backups of modified files as time passes, because backupping to floppies
is _slow_. Get lots of coffee/cola before even thinking of it.
The floppies you are going to use must be low-level formatted. Use
superformat (recommended) or fdformat. I suggest you use the fdutils
package to cram as much stuff as you can on the floppies - 1992K HD
floppies work reliably on my machine. The speed loss caused by big,
mixed-size sectors and stuff is nothing compared to the pain of changing
floppies more often.
INSTALL
First check out the Makefile. Then examine "defaults.h". To compile, just
type "make". To get install info, type "make install".
GENERAL
The main utils are "floppybackup" and "floppyrestore".
floppybackup reads data from stdin and outputs it to floppies.
For example:
tar cvf - /home | gzip -9c | floppybackup /dev/fd1 Home_03Jan97
floppyrestore reads data from floppies and outputs it to stdout.
For example:
floppyrestore /dev/fd1 | gzip -dc | tar -tvf -
Sometimes a mile-high pile of floppies collapses, and you are left with
unlabeled disks in random order. To make things easier, use floppycheck
to print info about a disk. For example:
floppycheck /dev/fd1
You can use the utils easily from using scripts or some kind of self-made
frontend.
At least I have floppies formatted in many different physical formats.
Some are 1992K, some 1440K, some even 720K (remnants from Atari ST).
Floppybackup and floppyrestore can read all autodetected floppy formats.
To enable non-standard floppy formats, get the "fdutils" package.
I even tried floppybackup with a 360K 5.25" drive, and 520K (40 tracks,
13 sectors per track) disks. Worked fine.
Some other related utils may also be included.
DOCS
Read the included man pages to get up-to-date info.
MAGIC
If you're unfamiliar with magic(4) or file(1), read the manpages first.
A magic-file addition for file(1) command is included. Append it to your
/etc/magic file. Then try the following on a floppybackup disk:
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=TestFile count=1 ; file ./TestFile
You should get something like
TestFile: floppybackup archive , version: v1.1 , Name: 03:12:19-12/16/96,
Floppy number 3 , 125926 bytes used , last disk in archive
Easier way would be to use the "floppycheck" util.
NOTES
Credits for this program should go to Damino Bolla. This is a modified
version of his "diskback" package. I just added some options, support for
multiformat floppies, verify mode, more verbose output and man pages. I
don't know Damiano's email-address. If you find bugs, blame me.
I have no idea what the latest version of the original is... I found
these proggies from an old InfoMagic Linux Developer's Resource CD set
(Nov95). If this version fails to work on your system, get the original
archive from somewhere.
========================================
Here is the original documentation:
Not all of it is correct any more...
========================================
The GNU Copyright is applyed here and to the programs.
This couple of programs implement a simple split system for a floppy
This version is tested with Linux .95b and can use file or memory
as a temporary storage.
Due to the behaviour of linux malloc you will know if you cannot use
memory as a tem storage by a memory fault.
Normally you see a message sayng:
Testing Memory
Memory OK
If you don't have enought memory ( Virtual memory ) then you will just see
Testing memory
To use the system as before, with files just call diskbackup using
diskbackup -f "archive name at sometime"
I tryed to test the program, and it seems to work for me......
If you have sugestions just tell me !
The rest of the readme is the OLD one... Informations on it may not be correct
-------------------------------------------------------------------
The problem is that Linux don't have a EOF in the floppy device
( This is reasonable since the EOF is the end of floppy itself)
This create problems when you want to backup short files or files
that are longer than one disk.
Both diskbackup and diskrestore work with stdin/stdout and use
stderr for messages with the operator. This make possible to
pipe tar in one end or another and avoid to create BIG files
Ex: To backup a complete disk you can use
NOTE: /tmp is used for the temp file by diskbackup ( A file as big as
a floppy ) and therefore we don't want to backup /tmp
cd /
tar -cf - bin etc dev usr home var | compress | diskbackup "Backup at day one"
Note that The variable FLOPPYDISK must be set to a valid disk
The program assumes 1.44 disks and therefore the device to use is
FLOPPYDISK=/dev/PS0; export FLOPPYDISK
To restore the disk just type
cd /
diskrestore | compress -d | tar -xf -
Damiano
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