support quality (Re: dump | restore fails: unknown tape headertype 1853384566)

[Peter Schuller]

> To add to this what SHOULD (ha!) work is to dump the database partition 
> FIRST and THEN dump the Transaction Log partition.

Depending on how the database works; specifically when old data in the
log may or may not be expunged. You could do this with PostgreSQL by
using it's PITR support for example. But to the extent that you have a
log which is only supposed to be used for internal reasons (such as
with pg by default), you'd likely be in trouble anyway unless you had
a specific reason to know that it is safe.

> As always any backup scheme has to be TESTED so you can prove to your 
> own satisfaction that it is RESTORABLE.  I can't tell you how many 
> business clients I have run into (and not only on Unix machines) that 
> have wind up with lots of backups and NONE of them can be restored - 
> because they never TESTED their backup strategy.

Very true, but it is equally dangerous to rely on testing *only*; a
backup system can be very very broken yet appear to work during
testing, either because backups only break sometimes or because they
break in ways that do not obviously and immediately blow up in your
face.

-- 
/ Peter Schuller

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