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Figure 64.7. The Lone-Tar Restore menu.
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When you have to restore a file, directory, or entire filesystem, find the proper backups. If you have been using the master and incremental routine, you will need the last master and all the incrementals since that master. Alternatively, if you are just looking for a few files you accidentally deleted, you may know which tape or drive they are on and can use just that medium.
To start a restore process, select the R option from the Lone-Tar main menu. This brings up the Restore menu, shown in Figure 64.7. Most of the options on the Restore menu are self-descriptive. For example, to restore an entire tape, you would use the “Restore entire tape to hard disk” option.
Figure 64.7. The Lone-Tar Restore menu.
Some of the other options on the Restore menu enable you to selectively restore directories or files, based on exact names or wildcards. You can also build a list of files or directories and have them all restored at once. Alternatively, you can decide which files or directories are not to be restored, create an exclusion list of them, and restore everything else.
After you have decided which files or directories to restore, Lone-Tar asks you to insert the tape and starts the restoration process. As with a backup, Lone-Tar echoes everything it does to the screen so you can see what it is doing.
Tip:
When performing a restore of a few files or directories, Lone-Tar has to search through the tape or medium to find those files. This can be a slow process, depending on the speed of the backup device, so don’t worry if you don’t see anything happening for a few minutes. You should see the status lights on your backup device blinking to show the device is being used by Lone-Tar.
If there is more than one tape or other device involved in the backup, Lone-Tar prompts you to insert the next volume. It keeps doing so until the restore process is complete.
If you are restoring from a combination of masters and incrementals, you must repeat the restore process for each tape. For example, if you accidentally erased an entire directory, you could use the last master backup to get the main files and then go through all the incrementals made since the master was created to obtain any changes. You have to perform the updates manually by using the Restore menu.
After the restoration is completed, Lone-Tar returns to the main menu. You should verify that the backup was to the proper location and everything looks correct.
Tape-Tell is a special feature of Lone-Tar that tells you a little about when the tape was used. This hinges on the Lone-Tar file that can be put at the beginning of the medium. We discussed this file in the section above on backing up using Lone-Tar.
The Lone-Tar Utilities menu, shown in Figure 64.8, holds a number of useful commands and functions. Most of these options are self-explanatory, but a few are very handy for users. It is helpful to check the backup date of the last master backup occasionally as a reminder of when you should start thinking about a new master backup.
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Figure 64.8. The Lone-Tar Utilities menu.
The automated use of Lone-Tar through cron is a neat feature that lets your system make backups without you being there. As you know from earlier chapters in this book, cron lets you schedule commands to be run at particular times or intervals, so you can easily set Lone-Tar to be run by cron to create incremental backups every night, twice a week, or whenever you want. You don’t need to know details about cron in order to schedule backups; Lone-Tar takes care of that for you.
The Utilities menu also lets you change the backup device type and details, so if you have more than one backup system on your Linux system, you can change between them. This is useful if you want to make master backups to a high-capacity device but incrementals to a different device.
The Environment menu, shown in Figure 64.9, contains a list of all the settings Lone-Tar works with. Many of these were set when you installed Lone-Tar, but you can modify them as you need in order to customize your installation.
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Figure 64.9. The Lone-Tar Environment menu lets you alter the behavior of the backup tool.
Lone-Tar has a lot of features we haven’t mentioned in this chapter, but you can read the online documentation to find out more about the system. Using Lone-Tar for your backup and restore operations is fast and easy, and you’ll find yourself doing them a lot more when you don’t have to fumble with awkward syntax or worry about mistyping a command. You should try to use the Lone-Tar demo we’ve provided on the CD-ROM. You’ll find it very easy to work with. From here there are a number of chapters you might be interested in:
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