Swedish speakers -- OpenBSD and IBM Tivoli TSM BA

[ropers]

Hi,
Does anybody out there have a working knowledge of Swedish?

I find myself having to use the Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/Archive
client (dsmc).

As much as I would prefer a free solution, this is the only offsite
backup supported in my organisaton and if I want to maintain an
OpenBSD server, I will have to get OpenBSD to talk to the Tivoli
server.

The only (hopefully) useful search result I could find was this page,
but it appears to be in Swedish:

http://archive.netbsd.se/?ml=bus&a=2005-06&t=966999

I tried automatic translation (http://tinyurl.com/f7vgq), but still
couldn't quite make sense of it. I emailed the OP, but haven't gotten
a reply thus far.

Would anyone be able to help?

Many thanks,
--ropers

[Bob Beck]

Hi.

I happen to also run Tivoli/TSM.

As far as I know there is no native OpenBSD Tivoli client. and for
disaster recovery purposes (if that's all you are using it for) you
don't really need one - the tivoli client does object by object (read
that - file by file) backup with "incrementals forever" - this is fine
for basically "user initiated restores" of an oops - which tivoli is
very good at. However, it's mostly unneccessary for a DR copy of
a system image.

There are however, linux and solaris clients. My suggestion? make a
linux or solaris box and install the client on it. set an appropritate
retention schedule for that in tsm, and attach a blob of disk to it,
send dumps from openbsd over ssh by cron nightly to that machine,
which in turn getst the blob of disk backed up to tsm. To restore, you
bring the appropriate dumpfile(s) back from tsm on that machine and
then make use of them on your OpenBSD box. (this of course precludes
the use of the "user restore" type stuff in tivoli - you are simply
storing copies of your dumps in tsm.

There *is* a documented C api to tivoli, unfortunately
it uses their libraries - so again, you can't write a native client
to do this easily. You could *possibly* write something on linux
and run it in linux emul mode, but I'm not that brave. I trust
dump and ssh.

-Bob

Post by ropers
Hi,
Does anybody out there have a working knowledge of Swedish?
I find myself having to use the Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/Archive
client (dsmc).
As much as I would prefer a free solution, this is the only offsite
backup supported in my organisaton and if I want to maintain an
OpenBSD server, I will have to get OpenBSD to talk to the Tivoli
server.
The only (hopefully) useful search result I could find was this page,
http://archive.netbsd.se/?ml=bus&a=2005-06&t=966999
I tried automatic translation (http://tinyurl.com/f7vgq), but still
couldn't quite make sense of it. I emailed the OP, but haven't gotten
a reply thus far.
Would anyone be able to help?
Many thanks,
--ropers
--
www.ropersonline.com

[ropers]

Post by Bob Beck

Post by ropers
Hi,
Does anybody out there have a working knowledge of Swedish?
I find myself having to use the Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/Archive
client (dsmc).
As much as I would prefer a free solution, this is the only offsite
backup supported in my organisaton and if I want to maintain an
OpenBSD server, I will have to get OpenBSD to talk to the Tivoli
server.
The only (hopefully) useful search result I could find was this page,
http://archive.netbsd.se/?ml=bus&a=2005-06&t=966999
I tried automatic translation (http://tinyurl.com/f7vgq), but still
couldn't quite make sense of it. I emailed the OP, but haven't gotten
a reply thus far.
Would anyone be able to help?
Many thanks,
--ropers

Hi.
I happen to also run Tivoli/TSM.
As far as I know there is no native OpenBSD Tivoli client. and for
disaster recovery purposes (if that's all you are using it for) you
don't really need one - the tivoli client does object by object (read
that - file by file) backup with "incrementals forever" - this is fine
for basically "user initiated restores" of an oops - which tivoli is
very good at. However, it's mostly unneccessary for a DR copy of
a system image.
There are however, linux and solaris clients. My suggestion? make a
linux or solaris box and install the client on it. set an appropritate
retention schedule for that in tsm, and attach a blob of disk to it,
send dumps from openbsd over ssh by cron nightly to that machine,
which in turn getst the blob of disk backed up to tsm. To restore, you
bring the appropriate dumpfile(s) back from tsm on that machine and
then make use of them on your OpenBSD box. (this of course precludes
the use of the "user restore" type stuff in tivoli - you are simply
storing copies of your dumps in tsm.
There *is* a documented C api to tivoli, unfortunately
it uses their libraries - so again, you can't write a native client
to do this easily. You could *possibly* write something on linux
and run it in linux emul mode, but I'm not that brave. I trust
dump and ssh.
-Bob

I'd been hoping to get the Linux TSM client to work on the OpenBSD box
under compat_linux(8)**. It seems to me that that's what's described
by that Swedish email post, but I don't quite understand it. The only
real option I have in terms of using another box to do the
backup/restore work would be using an existing Windows server and
running the Windows TSM client there, but I would really prefer
getting the Linux TSM client to work on OpenBSD.

**)
or use any other client OpenBSD can emulate cf. http://tinyurl.com/yxsnmm

[Sebastian Arvidsson Liem]

Don't know anything about TSM-clients but I'm swedish so here is a
translation of the important part.

-----
I've fought with the TSM-client on OpenBSD 3.7 and it's starts but I
have done any backups yet.

There is a little problem with dependencies but I did the following:

Installed the RedHat-library from OpenBSD packages.
symlinked /usr/local/emul/redhat to /emul/linux

Got the latest RPM version from Slackware 10.1 and unpacked it in
/usr/local/emul/redhat/

Runned /usr/local/emul/redhat/bin/rpm -initdb

Had a little problem to get the latest TSM-client running because it
needed libgpfs.so et cetera for Linux and I didn't succed in finding
any GPFS-dist to download.

Instead I tried the following client:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/storage/tivoli-storage-management/maintenance/client/v4r2/Linux
\
86/v423/

Unpacked the tar in a temp-folder and there was a TSM-client which
didn't need GPFS.

Installed the TSM-client with rpm -i --nodeps --ignoreos ....
It gets way down in under /opt/tivoli/.....

Created a config file under the clients bin-folder and the client
start with the command dsmc, more then that I havn't tried.

-----

[Jack J. Woehr]

My swedish ain't so guud but Stefan's solution appears to have been:

- Install RedHat library from OpenBSD package /usr/local/emul/redhat
and link it to /emul/linux.
- He used (under OBSD 3.7) the RPM version from Slackware 10.1
- He did a /usr/local/emul/redhat/bin/rpm -initdb
- He had some issues with certain .so's and fixed them by
downloading the Linux
client tar from ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/storage/tivoli-storage-
management/maintenance/client/v4r2/Linux86/v423/
unpacking it and inserting some of the Linux .so's from emul in
the place of the ones in the tarred RPM.
- Then it was rpm -i --nodeps --ignoreos to install it under /opt/
tivoli

Post by ropers

Post by ropers
Hi,
Does anybody out there have a working knowledge of Swedish?
I find myself having to use the Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/

Archive

Post by ropers
client (dsmc).

[Anders Nilsson]

Doh. There was no reply five minutes ago.. Oh well.. :)

/Anders

[ropers]

For the benefit of the archives:

I also did
touch /emul/linux/etc/mtab
in the process, which I didn't see documented in this context, but an
error message screamed about /etc/mtab missing, so there.

I'd like to thank you all very much for your responses! :)
Installing the older version v4r2 as per your translations appears to
have worked, though I first had problems with it conflicting with my
earlier attempts at getting v5r3 to work (I really need to learn more
about Linux and the deb/rpm package management systems).
# /emul/linux/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc
ANS1035S Options file '/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm.sys' not found
This error message is normal: That's what it says when its
configuration file isn't there. It could take some time till I manage
to fully configure and test this as I need to get an additional
account (for backing up the OpenBSD server) from the maintainers of
the central Tivoli/TSM backup server. That said, I fully intend to
follow-up once I've had a chance to find out whether it's definitely
working or not.
Again, many thanks for your help!
:)
--ropers

[Jurjen Oskam]

Post by ropers
I also did
touch /emul/linux/etc/mtab
in the process, which I didn't see documented in this context, but an
error message screamed about /etc/mtab missing, so there.

While it might be way cool to get the thing to run, are you *really really
sure* you want to do this? You're talking about the ability to backup *and
restore* your data. It's not a good idea to hack something together that
seems to work, and fails when you need it.

I really recommend doing this with tried, understood and proven methods. What
you're doing right now is building a house of cards.

Regards,

[Bob Beck]

While I'm mildly terrified, if it actually works perhaps shit
should be a port with a linux-lib dependency? There is a use for
this if someone is up to building it.

Post by ropers
I also did
touch /emul/linux/etc/mtab
in the process, which I didn't see documented in this context, but an
error message screamed about /etc/mtab missing, so there.

I'd like to thank you all very much for your responses! :)
Installing the older version v4r2 as per your translations appears to
have worked, though I first had problems with it conflicting with my
earlier attempts at getting v5r3 to work (I really need to learn more
about Linux and the deb/rpm package management systems).
# /emul/linux/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc
ANS1035S Options file '/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm.sys' not found
This error message is normal: That's what it says when its
configuration file isn't there. It could take some time till I manage
to fully configure and test this as I need to get an additional
account (for backing up the OpenBSD server) from the maintainers of
the central Tivoli/TSM backup server. That said, I fully intend to
follow-up once I've had a chance to find out whether it's definitely
working or not.
Again, many thanks for your help!
:)
--ropers

--
www.ropersonline.com

[ropers]

I'd like to thank you all very much for your responses! :)

Installing the older version v4r2 as per your translations appears to
have worked, though I first had problems with it conflicting with my
earlier attempts at getting v5r3 to work (I really need to learn more
about Linux and the deb/rpm package management systems).
In any case, I can now execute:

# /emul/linux/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsmc
ANS1035S Options file '/opt/tivoli/tsm/client/ba/bin/dsm.sys' not found

This error message is normal: That's what it says when its
configuration file isn't there. It could take some time till I manage
to fully configure and test this as I need to get an additional
account (for backing up the OpenBSD server) from the maintainers of
the central Tivoli/TSM backup server. That said, I fully intend to
follow-up once I've had a chance to find out whether it's definitely
working or not.

Again, many thanks for your help!
:)
--ropers

[Anders Nilsson]

Post by ropers
Does anybody out there have a working knowledge of Swedish?
The only (hopefully) useful search result I could find was this page,

Quick summary:

(The guy doing the test is "Stefan". His contact info is on the archive page)

----------------------------
Marcus:
"I got a few tips from the guy here running TSM on BSD."

Stefan:
I've been struggling with the TSM-client on OpenBSD 3.7 and I got it
running, but I haven't tried backing anything up yet.

There are some dependency problems, but I did the following:

Installed the RedHat-library from OpenBSD packages.
/usr/local/emul/ symlinked to /emul/linux

Got the latest RPM from Slackware 10.1 and extracted it to
/usr/local/emul/redhat

Ran /usr/local/emul/redhat/bin/rpm -initdb

Had problems running the latest TSM-client since it required
libgpfs.so etc, for Linux, and I didn't find any GPFS-dist to
download.

Instead, I tried the following client:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/storage/tivoli-storage-management/maintenance/client/v4r2/Linux
\
86/v423/

Extracted the tar-file in a temporary directory and there was a
TSM-client that didn't require GPFS.

Installed the client with rpm -i --nodeps --inoreos .... it ends up
deep in /opt/tivoli/....

Created a config-file in the client bin-folder and the client starts
when you type dsmc, but I haven't tried anything else.

----------------------------

Regards,
Anders

[Jurjen Oskam]

Post by ropers
I find myself having to use the Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/Archive
client (dsmc).
As much as I would prefer a free solution, this is the only offsite
backup supported in my organisaton and if I want to maintain an
OpenBSD server, I will have to get OpenBSD to talk to the Tivoli
server.

There is no TSM client for OpenBSD. I wouldn't recommend running one
under any emulation mode. Should you happen to run into problems, you're
SOL because IBM will say that it's not supported and you can't fix it
yourself since it's closed source.

I think the most easy (and safe) solution is to install a TSM client on
a supported platform on another machine. Use tar/dump/whatever on
the OpenBSD machine, and store the resulting files on the machine with the
TSM client on it.

Regards,

[Joachim Schipper]

Post by ropers
Hi,
Does anybody out there have a working knowledge of Swedish?
I find myself having to use the Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/Archive
client (dsmc).
As much as I would prefer a free solution, this is the only offsite
backup supported in my organisaton and if I want to maintain an
OpenBSD server, I will have to get OpenBSD to talk to the Tivoli
server.
The only (hopefully) useful search result I could find was this page,
http://archive.netbsd.se/?ml=bus&a=2005-06&t=966999
I tried automatic translation (http://tinyurl.com/f7vgq), but still
couldn't quite make sense of it. I emailed the OP, but haven't gotten
a reply thus far.
Would anyone be able to help?

It appears, though I've not done more than take a quick glance, that
this product can back up from NFS exports. If so, that might be the
least hackish solution.

Joachim

[ropers]

Post by Joachim Schipper

Post by ropers
Hi,
Does anybody out there have a working knowledge of Swedish?
I find myself having to use the Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/Archive
client (dsmc).
As much as I would prefer a free solution, this is the only offsite
backup supported in my organisaton and if I want to maintain an
OpenBSD server, I will have to get OpenBSD to talk to the Tivoli
server.
The only (hopefully) useful search result I could find was this page,
http://archive.netbsd.se/?ml=bus&a=2005-06&t=966999
I tried automatic translation (http://tinyurl.com/f7vgq), but still
couldn't quite make sense of it. I emailed the OP, but haven't gotten
a reply thus far.
Would anyone be able to help?

It appears, though I've not done more than take a quick glance, that
this product can back up from NFS exports. If so, that might be the
least hackish solution.

Sorry to appear lazy, but do you remember where you saw that? IMHO
IBM's Tivoli documentation is all over the place, that's why I don't
seem to be finding information to confirm this (much less to help me
to implement this). If you don't remember then nevermind -- I'll get
to test the installed Linux dsmc TSM client fairly soon. If I can
fully test it and IFF it fully works, including restoring the entire
mullarkey to another HDD, then I could probably use the Linux TSM
client as is, though I do understand the earlier poster's concerns.

[Bob Beck]

Post by ropers

Post by Joachim Schipper
It appears, though I've not done more than take a quick glance, that
this product can back up from NFS exports. If so, that might be the
least hackish solution.

Sorry to appear lazy, but do you remember where you saw that? IMHO
IBM's Tivoli documentation is all over the place, that's why I don't
seem to be finding information to confirm this (much less to help me
to implement this). If you don't remember then nevermind -- I'll get
to test the installed Linux dsmc TSM client fairly soon. If I can
fully test it and IFF it fully works, including restoring the entire
mullarkey to another HDD, then I could probably use the Linux TSM
client as is, though I do understand the earlier poster's concerns.

While as you know, the other posters concerns were mine as
well (i.e. I don't necessarily trust the dsmc client in emulation)
the fact is I don't trust *any* of the tivoili (or any other) commercial
backup crap until tested. Whether you run it in emulation *or* via
nfs, or dumps to a disk on a suppoerted machine, you really do
need to test that you can get it back.

Generally speaking, I don't like to use dsmc (even on a supported
machine) for baremetal restore - it's just a pita. I back up the
system with dump or equivalent to somewhere and get the dump file into
tsm. I do use dsmc for luser data and stuff I'm likely to want to
restore a file by file.

YMMV, but whatever you do, test it. I may try your linux
dsm client trick just to see..

-Bob

[Joachim Schipper]

Post by ropers

Post by Joachim Schipper

Post by ropers
I find myself having to use the Tivoli Storage Manager Backup/Archive
client (dsmc).
As much as I would prefer a free solution, this is the only offsite
backup supported in my organisaton and if I want to maintain an
OpenBSD server, I will have to get OpenBSD to talk to the Tivoli
server.

It appears, though I've not done more than take a quick glance, that
this product can back up from NFS exports. If so, that might be the
least hackish solution.

Sorry to appear lazy, but do you remember where you saw that? IMHO
IBM's Tivoli documentation is all over the place, that's why I don't
seem to be finding information to confirm this (much less to help me
to implement this). If you don't remember then nevermind -- I'll get
to test the installed Linux dsmc TSM client fairly soon. If I can
fully test it and IFF it fully works, including restoring the entire
mullarkey to another HDD, then I could probably use the Linux TSM
client as is, though I do understand the earlier poster's concerns.

Mostly circumstantial evidence like
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tivihelp/v1r1/topic/com.ibm.itsmc.doc/ans50000127.htm#back014.
Admittedly, this is not terribly clear; I had hoped that someone who
was more familiar with the product would find the note sufficient.

Some more research does not help terribly much. Than again, whoever set
up the system should be able to answer this question...

Joachim