Solaris

Hi,

I have an ancient SunOS 5.6 and I have to backup all the data onto it. I have tried connecting a tape drive but it does not boot up (something to do with its SCSI configuration I guess) when I do.

So I am left with the possibility of copying files remotely from the SunOs box to another machne via RCP. Problem: RCP handles SYMLINKS terribly and it copies all this extraneous data to my receiving hard drive and fills it up to capacity before all other essential data from source has been received.

Right now I am working on a solution using RSH and CPIO....
Can anyone suggest me a way of using these commands given my requirements? My attempts have failed heretofore.

tar should be able to handle links, symlinks, permissions, and perhaps users relatively intelligently. Its behavior for device files varies from implementation to implementation.

I'd avoid rsh/rcp if at all possible. Does the box have a working ssh client? I sometimes do things like:

Code:

tar -cf - /path | ssh user@host 'cat > archive.tar'

which will create the file archive.tar on the remote host if its version of tar supports the '-' parameter to mean stdin/stdout. You could also have it extract the tar directly with 'tar -C /path/to/destination -xf -'.

WEll I do not have ssh but rsh and I get the following...I have to backup all my / partition:

Code:

tar -cf / | rsh 10.20.202.131 'cat > /beauvert/archive.tar'
tar: Missing filenames

What do I need to do?

You copied my example imperfectly. The dash tells it to write to stdout, without it, you're telling it to create a tar file file named / !

tar -cf - / | rsh ...

I don't know if my ssh trick works with rsh or not. but worth a shot...