HP-UX System Administrator's Guide: Routine Management Tasks

Example of Setting Backup Levels
Assume you want the following three backup levels:
• Level 0 - full monthly backup
• Level 1 - weekly backup on Friday
• Level 2 - daily backup, except Friday
There are three ways you can implement these levels: use HP SMH, enter the fbackup
command and specify a backup level on the command line, or automate the commands
(see “Setting Up an Automated Backup Schedule” (page 134)). The figure below
illustrates the level numbers for implementing this example.
Date: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 ... 1
Day: Su M T W Th Fr Sa Su M T W Th F Sa Su ...
Backup level 0 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 ... 0
If your data becomes corrupt on Thursday the 12th, do the following to restore your
system to its Wednesday the 11th state:
1. Restore the monthly full backup tape from Sunday the 1st.
2. Restore the weekly incremental backup tape from Friday the 6th.
3. Restore the incremental backup tape from Wednesday the 11th.
For information on the actual method and commands to restore these tapes, see
“Restoring Your Data” (page 139).
Backing Up Your Data Using the fbackup Command
The /usr/sbin/fbackup command is the recommended HP-UX backup utility. The
fbackup command can do the following:
• indicate specific files or directories to include or exclude from a backup
• specify different levels of backup on a daily, a weekly, or monthly basis
• create an online index file
• when used in conjunction with the crontab utility can automate backups
130 Managing Systems