Re: mkisofs aborts but exit value is 0

[Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>]

Joerg Schilling wrote:

Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> wrote:

  

Apologies, an entire sentence was deleted from the above by finger 
check. The issue raised is that star backups are not bootable on any 
machine I've found, and are unsuitable for "system backups" for that 
reason. ISO CDs are bootable on many machines, and AIX on IBM hardware 
supports making bootable backup, which is what I was thinking for a 
system backup.
    

A CD that boots on amd64 would not always boot on x86. A CD that boots
on x86 would usually not boot on Sparc.....
  

True, nor would the binary files for x86 execute on SPARC. Therefore you would restore a system backup on a compatible system. But if the system backup isn't bootable it isn't a backup, because you have to load the O/S from something else.

I think you are reading "system backup" and thinking "full file backup of the system" which preserves the data but not the ability to recover a system without additional data. So perhaps you are used to other terminology and I wasn't clear.n

A bootable backup is not the right solution.

A better solution is a method that allows you to restore the basic OS
to the old setup in a fast way and then to play back the backup
for the data. Note that a typical CD or DVD is no longer able to include
a complete backup even for the base system.

One way if to archive a flar(1M) and to restore from the original install
CDs and the other way is to have a live CD that includes the backup tool
and to restore a real backup from your system.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO TMR Associates, Inc
  Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979