Backup Manager - Manipulation of existing backups

Any backup files you have created, and any tab-delimited or offline viewing format export files you have created, will be displayed in a list under the "Existing" tab in Backup Manager. This screen allows you to delete, download, open, obtain information, or compress/uncompress your existing files. If you do not have any existing backups or export files, no files will be listed here, and you should click either the "Backup" or "Export" tab to create a file to manipulate.

Choosing to delete a backup removes it from the system. To delete a backup archive, click the delete icon (from the "Del" column). You can also mark more than one existing backup file and then click the delete icon in the "(marked)" row.

The backup function removes the backup archive from your system entirely. Note that there is no "undelete" function, so be careful when deleting backup archives.

To download an archive from the server to your local machine, click on the download icon (from the "Dnld" column) next to the desired backup archive. Your browser, if correctly configured, should prompt you to save the archive to your hard drive. Note that if compression is available, the file will transfer more quickly if you have first compressed the file.

When prompted to save the file, choose a location on your hard disk where the file can be easily found later. Replace the suggested file name with one more easily recognizable if desired.

All restore functions are accessed by opening a backup archive. To open a backup archive, click the open icon (from the "Open" column) next to the desired backup archive. The open icon is available only for backup files, and is not available for exported data.

To get information about a backup archive, click on the information icon (from the "Info" column) next to the desired backup archive. This reports several statistics about the archive, including a summary of the files it contains. The information icon is available only for backup files, and is not available for exported data.

To compress or decompress an archive, click the compress icon (from the "Cprs" column) next to the desired backup archive. Clicking this icon decompresses the archive if it is compressed, and vice versa. This is intended to allow you to save disk space when working with backups.

NOTE: This function is available only if your system contains the perl Compress::Zlib module. This depends on how perl is installed on your system (it does not depend on the way you installed Discus). As with all functionality provided by optional perl modules, if you do not see this option, ask your system administrator to install the perl module noted above.

Comments:

The compression mechanism used for the compression and uncompression utilities is defined in RFC 1952: GZIP 4.3 specification. This is the same compression method used by the "gzip" and "gunzip" utilities, which are found on nearly every unix system and are widely supported by client programs such as WinZip. Notably, this method of compression does not use the LZW algorithm and is not subject to UNISYS and IBM patents covering that algorithm.
From the unix command line, compressed archives can be uncompressed by issuing the command gunzip filename.tar.gz. Uncompressed archives can be compressed from the command line using gzip -9 filename.tar.
For consistency with the "gzip" and "gunzip" programs, compressed files created by Discus are given the ".gz" extension. Files uncompressed by Discus have their ".gz" extension removed.
If you are your own system administrator and you do not have the Compress::Zlib module installed, you can obtain it from CPAN. See: http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-module/Compress/.

Restoring from a backup is documented separately in the restoring from a backup instructions.