I use symlinks, and it seems to work fine. Netbackup will follow the symlink, and will backup the destination directory. I have not been able to use symlinks to backup files, however.
For example, we have a cronjob which creates the following directory once per week. The date string changes every week.
/nfs/nfs1.example.com/backup/server/weekly/20070915/
This cronjob also updates the following symbolic link every week:
Code:
$ ls -ld /backup/server/weekly/ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 39 Sep 27 16:50 /backup/server/weekly/ -> /nfs/nfs1.example.com/backup/server/weekly/20070915
My Netbackup Netbackup policy has a backup selection of '/backup/server/weekly/'. The last backslash '/' is important, otherwise Netbackup will only backup the link itself, not the target.
In addition, I can see the files under the 'Restore Files' menu, and I have even run a couple of successful restores using these backup images. However, they are /nfs/nfs1.example.com/backup/server/weekly/20070915 .
I just discovered this possibility last week. Symantec support said this could not be done, but it seems to work fine. I hope that I'm not missing something obvious.