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Re: [TCLUG:20799] Need help with SCSI Tape backup
>
> Question: How do I communicate with this tape drive? It is the only SCSI
> device in the system and I have no experience with SCSI devices.
Since it's a tape, it doesn't have a filesystem so you can't really mount
it. All you do is write to the raw device (like /dev/sd0 or whatever).
>
> I need to figure out how to mount it somehow so I can use dd, cpio, tar, etc. to
> write to it. Would Amanda be a good tool to use?
All of those tools would work. I'd stay away from dd - it'll work, but
isn't the best tool for the job. cpio works ok. tar is a really nice
backup tool. Amanda is good and it can interface with any of the
afore-mentioned tools to do backups as well as plain ol' "dump".
>
> If anyone could point me to some how-tos or web sites that could help I would
> appreciate it. I may pick up the O'Reilly book 'Unix Backup and Recovery' in
> the next day or two - I think that it could be valuable considering my level of
> expertise at the moment.
Yes. If you're going to be doing backups, you _must_ have this book. I
got this book knowing little about backups (maybe more than you know now,
but not by much). In no time, I was planning out a 10 gig/night backup
with a full pledged disaster recovery plan. Unix Backup and Recovery is
_the_ best O'Reilly book I've ever purchased. Get it right now! :)
It's 40% off at www.bookpool.com (as is every O'Reilly book).
Gabe
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Gabe Turner | X-President,
UNIX Systems Administrator, | Assoc. for Computing Machinery
U of M Supercomputing Institute for | Univerisity of Minnesota
Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation | dopp@acm.cs.umn.edu
"No sir, I don't like it!" - Mr. Horse in "Fire Dogs"
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