Why BSD?

[Jason M. Leonard]

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004, Jesse Guardiani wrote:

> Jason M. Leonard wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 24 Jan 2004, Jesse Guardiani wrote:
> >
> >> Jeff Elkins wrote:
> >>
> >> > This is not a troll.
> >> >
> >> > I've installed FreeBSD 5.2 on a spare SCSI drive and am compiling
> >> > kernels, updating ports, etc,etc. Thus far, other than some minor
> >> > hassles, it's equivilent to my Debian sid.
> >> >
> >> > I have to ask: Why FreeBSD rather than Linux?
> >> >
> >> > Honest question.
> >>
> >> For me, this question has been answered twice in different attempts to
> >> "give linux a try". I'm a Sys Admin, and we run FreeBSD almost
> >> exclusively at work. However, every new employee we hire walks into the
> >> building with an attitude that Linux is somehow better than FreeBSD
> >> because they're heard so much about it and haven't heard anything about
> >> FreeBSD. So, on two separate occasions, I decided to "give linux a try".
> >> Both ended miserably:
> >>
> > *snip*
> >>
> >> Occasion 2.) Got sick of Win 98 SE on my wife's computer, so I decided to
> >> "give
> >>              Linux a second chance".
> >>
> >>  This time I WANTED to go with Red Hat, since it's arguably the most
> >>  popular Linux distro. However, one look at their new licensing made me
> >>  change my mind in favor of Gentoo - The most BSD-like Linux distro.
> >>
> >>  Maybe I was doing something wrong, but I couldn't find an automated
> >>  install process. I had to read a text file and copy and paste install
> >>  commands by HAND to get Gentoo installed. This was painful and tedious.
> >>  It took probably 4 hours to install. Their motto is "freedom of choice"
> >>  or something similar. Well where is my freedom to choose a quick
> >>  install???
> >>
> >>  Pros: Very nice BSD-like portage system. Top notch.
> >>
> >>  Cons: Terrible install process. Took forever.
> >
> > A couple of weeks ago I acquired a 4x50 slot Overland Neo tape library for
> > the purpose of backing up several 1T volumes that live on FreeBSD file
> > servers.  Unfortunately I could not find backup server software for
> > FreeBSD that would allow me to back up volumes that span multiple tapes.
>
> [...]
>
> > Needless to say, I will be implementing a better--and no doubt
> > Linuxless--backup solution as soon as possible.
>
>
> Well, bacula will allow you to span multiple tapes. Be warned: Bacula+FreeBSD
> is in it's infancy, and you'll need 4.9-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE or higher in
> order to reliably use the multi-tape backup spanning functionality (a bug in
> the pthreads implementation of earlier versions of FreeBSD would cause data
> loss on the last 500k or so of tape). But this is what I'm currently
> implementing at work. We require nearly 1T of backup space too, and I intend
> to eek every last gig of space from my tapes.
>
> Again, bacula+FreeBSD is in it's infancy. I'm currently working with Kern,
> bacula's author, to get some issues worked out. And I have a few small patches
> that would probably make your life easier. But I definately see bacula as being
> a good backup solution for FreeBSD in the near future.
>
> Bacula also allows you to back up to disk. 160G large capacity ATA hard disks
> have a better cost/MB ratio than many tapes out there currently.
>
> Something to think about...
>
> http://www.bacula.org

Thanks.  I have thought about Bacula, actually.  The problem is this:

"There is no concept of a Pool of backup devices (i.e. if device /dev/nst0
is busy, use /dev/nst1, ...)."

I have twenty 1T volumes spread out over four FreeBSD file servers; I
have 200 110G SDLT1 (no compression for me because most of my data is
audio) tapes in a library with two SDLT1 drives.  The library supports up
to 16 drives, and I hope to get at least a couple more in there this year.
I have to be able to write to multiple devices simultaneously.


:Fuzz