date: May 8, 1987 to: DECUS RT-11 users from: Edward L. Hendrickson 258K Metals Development Ames Laboratory ISU/USDOE Ames, IA 50011 515/294-3590 Subject: First release of BAKALL.IND backup procedure. BAKALL.IND was written by Edward L. Hendrickson of the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University as part of U.S. Department of Energy contract W-7405-ENG-82. The right to use this software release is allowed in the public domain. The author, Ames La- boratory, and USDOE assume no respon- sibility as to the correctness of the code nor the appropriateness for such use as it may be applied. Any com- ments about this backup command pro- cedure may be directed to the author at 258K Metals Development, Ames La- boratory, Ames, Iowa 50011. BAKALL.IND RT-11 SIG DECUS Release 1 Spring 1987 1.0 GENERAL OVERVIEW BAKALL.IND is an IND command file that automates the backup process. It backs up a complete device to magnetic tape using the BACKUP/DEVICE command. The code currently keeps track of 5 complete backup tape sets and 2 devices, DU0 and DU1. You will most likely have to implement a few slight modifications to make the command file work for you. I have commented the code near the spots where you will probably need to make some changes. All of the changes should be minor and usually in- volve only changing tape volume names. This version of BAKALL.IND is designed to run under TSX-plus. It will use the display command and will open a log file. RT-11 people who wish to use this command procedure will have to live without the log file and can convert to Displa.Ind contained in FLXIND.Dsk on this tape. Editing of BAKALL.IND to modify "SET LOG ..." and "DISPLAY ..." commands will be re- quired in this case. (DISPLAY will become @SY:DISPLA.IND .) 2.0 INSTALLATION AND IMPLEMENTAION. There are only two files that you will need, BAKALL.IND and TAPERF.DOC. TAPERF.DOC is a page of documentation that con- tains current dates and locations of all backup sets. I have included our current TAPERF.DOC for you to use as a guide. You will have to customize TAPERF.DOC to fit your specific needs. You should update TAPERF.DOC everytime you do a backup. BAKALL.IND will open a log file and record all neces- sary data needed to document each individual tape. This log file includes a current directory, the date and time, what set number this is, and the actual commands used to backup the device. The PRINT command in BAKALL.IND will print TAPERF.DOC and each .LOG file done for this backup set. I keep the cur- rent TAPERF.DOC and all of the latest log files in a 3 ring binder for easy access in case we actually have to use the backups. -1- BAKALL.IND RT-11 SIG DECUS Release 1 Spring 1987 3.0 CAUTION Before you depend on this command file too heavily I would advise that you try a BACKUP/RESTORE to find out if you can actually restore the tape. We have found that we have trouble restoring single files and must use another program called Bupres, (which was released on a previous RT SIG tape and has been included in case you require it). Bupres may require that you use RT-11 version 5.2 BUP; bad block management in later versions is not known to be incorporated in Bupres. Of course, if you have bad blocks on the disks being backed up, you will have to use a BUP distributed with RT-11 version 5.3 or later, in which case you may need to BACKUP/RESTORE/DEVICE to reload files. The restoration of a single file from a backup tape was fixed with version 5.4 of RT-11, with the exception that a disorgan- ized directory may still prevent it from working. This can also be a problem with Bupres. The workaround appears to be to squeeze the disks that exhibit such a problem. Bad block management appears also to be improved in version 5.4 . Tests with version 5.4a have shown that restoration will work for an individual file but that it still can fail with an invalid EMT at location 26250 under certain circumstances. (The saga con- tinues...) -2-