Stuart Miller - Ablewisp wrote:
Installing rpm's for a backup program was like being back in the dark
days of DOS. I used YAST (but it was not plain sailing) and I guess,
with time, I'll get used to installing new software, but it could be
easier.
I'm curious what you chose for backup software, and what you think of it?
I'm using GNU tar, which was almost certainly preinstalled on your SUSe
box, and whilst the interface for a backup utility isn't nice it has the
advantage of having been used literally 10's billions of times (this
year probably), so doesn't come with any surprises.
But then perhaps I'm a backup software "fascist", as I haven't liked any
backup software on any platform since "dump"/"restore" for Unix (no not
the evil rubbish SCO ship as dump/restore, I think they still ship
ufsdump/ufsrestore which is like the original dump/restore), and Jumbo
Tape backup for DOS, and almost nobody uses them any more. Both just
present a mock file system view of the backed up data and ask you to
flag files for restore (for partial recovery).
fbackup/frestore for HP-UX was "passable", but I found a bug in it once,
whilst going through a dry run of a disaster recovery process, which
prevented me restoring from a write protected tape. Bad HP, bad.
Everything from MS Windows backup (every version so far), upwards, tends
to have a hideously complicated user interface, bugs, bizarre or poorly
documented formats, tries to be too clever, or other "features", that
mean eventually finding data is not on the tape, when you'd rather it
was. Or that the restore procedure is hideously complex.
Ideally you get something supported by or easily added to a bootable CD
distribution. Some of HP's enterprise systems had a disk dump utility in
the firmware, I sometimes miss the expensive enterprise systems in these
days of commodity x86. Both allow a restore of the system without having
to install the OS separately, can save many hours when something really
bad happens.
Oh, for a simple double click on the equivalent of an exe file
This discussion rages elsewhere, mostly /. on autopackage, but the
desire for a ".exe" install is very misplaced IMO.
That isn't to say you shouldn't have the same convenience.
My understanding of Yast (whilst dated) was that you just add a network
source of RPMs through the Yast software setup, and those extra
repositories then become accessible via the regular software install
tool. Is this not still the case in 10?
I didn't especially like the Yast software installer in the last version
I used, but it did the job in a solid business-like fashion, and I
didn't have any trouble pulling up the software I needed from SUSe
repositories, or upgrading installed software.
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