[H-GEN] Backups etc...

[Craig Armour]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and
Unix-related topics. ]

Hi

I am wondering what most people do w.r.t to backups

currently we are using a cronjob and tar to backup the system, however
on occasions, the box has crashed with tar being one of the top process
in mode D (waiting for io)


  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT  LIB %CPU %MEM   TIME
COMMAND
27306 root      10   0   608  608   452 D       0  7.6  0.1   0:03 tar

which is not a good thing (tm)

I am wondering what thoughts people had

do most people shut down to init s before backing up??

I would like to stick with tar but this has been a problem.  One thought
has been is that the tape drive is not terminating properly. (it's an
exabyte 8500 something??) has anyone had experience with these drives?? 
any thoughts would be appreciated.

Cheers
Craig
-- 
Craig Armour			c.armour at arts.uq.edu.au
System Administrator    	 Joyce Ackroyd Building 
Language Lab, University of Queensland   phone 33656916

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