Automatic backup through DD and crontab

Hi,

I have not been working with Solaris for more than 10 years ago. Many things and details have ben forgotten. Hopes that some could help me with the problem. We used this scripts (below) for daily backup.

The problems is following:
I want to backup all partions/slice on a specific Solaris server to a tape device through crontab every day. The first part of the tape contains a scripts that will be used for automatic restore if something went wrong. It means that the first part of the tape contains a script, and the second part of the tape contians the daily backups.

If we need to restore the hole server, it's sufficient to boot the server from the tapedevice. The scripts will be run ant the restore job will start automatic. When the jobs is done the server is rebuilt to the latest version.

Assume it's necessary to use cron, dd, mt

We used this scripts for more than 10 years ago. Maybe it's possible to use other methods today. I also know that HP-UX have a simular tools built into the operating system.

Have you checked the Solaris documentation - Admin section or google? depends on what you need but I would avoid dd. see tar, ufsdump, flar and probably some new utilities in the most recent versions.

whether cpio fits in here?

we use dd for our weekly backups...

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c1t0d0s2 of=/dev/rdsk/c1t1d0s2 bs=1024k >>/opt/home/peri/ddstatus 2>&1

here backup is taken of entire disk (slice2) from target0 to target1....you can use /dev/rmt/0cn as of device in case u want to take backup on tape...

After using dd to clone disks, you need to fsck the cloned filesystems. You will probably find something wrong. That bothered me a lot. I don't know why.