File names and backing up to DVD

[David Kramer]

Nathan Meyers wrote:
> David Kramer wrote:
>> I usually back up to an external USB hard drive, but I'm playing with
>> backing up to DVD, since I have a stack of DL dvds.  I threw together
>> a quick script to call mkisofs, but I'm getting this:
>>   
> Hi David,
> 
> genisoimage merges the various filesystems you point to into a single
> root. So if you point it to /foo and /bar, the resulting ISO filesystem
> doesn't contain /foo and /bar, it contains the contents of /foo and /bar
> merged to the root directory.
> 
> Something like this will give you the structure you were originally
> expecting to get:
> 
> genisoimage ... -graft-points foo=/foo bar=/bar ...

Hrmf.  Disappointing.  I was trying to make a backup script that could
do either .tgz or .iso and optionally burn to disk.  ISO9660 is _way_
too restrictive though.  I had all sorts of issues, and most of them I
was able to get around by adding yet more "yes I know what I'm doing"
switches to mkisofs, but in the end I had too many issues with symlinks.

I think what I'm gonna have to do is create a .tgz and burn it to disk
with the "yes I know this file is fracking huge" flag.  It will take up
a lot less space, but if I need to restore stuff, I'll have to gunzip it
somewhere first.  Given I have about four external USB hard drives lying
around, and I've only had to restore something from a backup like twice
in 10 years, I guess I can live with that.

Thanks for your help.