Return to BackupsThis section provides links and explains some of the technical details behind the backup software.
The program used for backups is called ezdump. It reads a configuration file called dump.conf. Man pages for both of these are located on all CKP servers.
A monthly backup is a level 0 dump of each of the filesystems listed in dump.conf using the dump(8) command found on all versions of Unix. Again, man pages exist for dump(8) on all servers; each vendor's version of dump is slightly different. Each filesystem is considered a different "file" on the tape.
When a weekly tape is "labeled", a small text file is written to the tape (as the first file). It contains the hostname, date, and list of partitions to be dumped. This file is also stored on the machine in /var/log/dumplabel.
Each night ezdump -d is run via cron(8). This will read the first file off of the tape and compare it to /var/log/dumplabel. If they do not match, the wrong tape is in the drive and the program aborts. Otherwise the program seeks to the end of the tape and dumps all filesystems listed in dump.conf. It will do a level 3 dump if it is Tuesday (since tapes should be changed Monday) and a level 5 otherwise.
It is very important to realize that there is no encryption of the data on the backup tapes. This means that anyone who has the equipment to read that tape will have complete access to all of the data on that tape. In the case of Level 0 backups this includes the password files, personal mail, all user directories and more. You should consider all backup tapes as important documents. Keep them in a safe locked location. Also, it is a good idea to keep at least one of the monthly backup tapes offsite.