File names and backing up to DVD

[Nathan Meyers]

>
> 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,
No luck with the -R option on symlinks?

The scary thing about a single .tgz image is how vulnerable the entire 
contents are to a single error. One bad bit can ruin the readability of 
the gzipped image.

My DVD backup trick is to individually compress the files: I use "afio 
-Z" to copy entire subtrees to a temporary location, then build an ISO 
image from the resulting file tree.

There's also a nonstandard transparent compression available for ISO9660 
that compresses individual files.

Nathan




David Kramer wrote:
> 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.
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