Re: How do I configure Tape Drive

[<karlp ourldsfamily com>]

I use an internal dat drive. The name of the device is /dev/sc0 (scsi
Cartridge zero) and I use these commands, among others, to backup:

1 tar czvf /dev/sc0 .    <- will backup cwd and children
2 find . -print |cpio -ovcB > /dev/sc0   <- will backup cwd and children

To restore:

1 tar xzvf /dev/sc0   <- pwd better be target for restore
2 cpio -ivcdumB < /dev/sc0  <- pwd should be directory to descend into

There are a couple things to remember for the find piped to cpio:

1. Your tape will be formatted based on where you are and what format your
find command takes, I.e:

find / -print | etc...  will force the restore to the root directory which
will cause anything you restore to overwrite the target.

find . -print | etc...  will allow you to restore to any filesystem. FOr
example, suppose you just want to restore /etc, but don't want to overwrite
/etc on the system. If you make the backup using this option, you can cd
/tmp and do cpio -ivcdumB "./etc/*" < /dev/sc0 and it will create /tmp/etc
and put everything under /etc off the tape there. That brings up another
discussion about the find command. Sometimes in the quotes you have to test
things: "./etc/*"  or  "/etc/*"  or  "etc/*" ... These will make a
difference depending on how you did the find command at backup time. Yes,
cpio is a headache sometimes.

I use tar whenever time and space aren't problems. tar takes more tape space
and more time to save the same stuff as cpio. That's a general statement.
You will notice that my tar commands use a 'z' in the switches. That's for
compression. It's nice, but slows the backup down a tad.

(OFF Topic NOTE:  you may have noticed downloaded files having .tar.gz or
.tgz at the end. You can use tar in a single step to unarchive the file if
you add 'z' to the switches as example 1 above does).

I hope you've gotten some help from this. I doubt I would have. I have to
try things over and over until I know how they work before I really
understand it...

--
Karl L. Pearson
Senior Consulting Systems Analyst
Senior Consulting Database Analyst
karlp ourldsfamily com
 My Thoughts on Terrorism In America:
 http://www.ourldsfamily.com/wtc.shtml

On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Robert Jackson wrote:

Hi All,

I have my Redhat Linux 7.1 database server set-up as I now want it. My only
issue is with the tape drive. The machine has an internal SCSI DAT drive.

How do I configure Linux to allow me to use the tape drive with say 'tar'
or 'cpio'.


TIA,
Rab.
=========================================================
Robert Jackson                            Phone: +44 (0) 141 332 7999
Software Engineer                           Fax:  +44 (0) 141 331 2820
Walker Martyn Ltd
1 Park Circus Place                      Email:  rab walkermartyn co uk
Glasgow G3 6AH, Scotland             Web:  http://www.walkermartyn.co.uk
=========================================================




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