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Re: [TCLUG:20799] Need help with SCSI Tape backup




There is really no good documentation about SCSI tape backups on the web -
I know, since I went through setting up my own recently. 

I really don't know enough about them to set up a LDP "howto" on SCSI
tape drives, but I may give it a shot anyway - just to get _something_ out
there. 

Your tape drive should show up as /dev/st0

To back up your system to the tape drive with tar, 

cd /
tar cvMf /dev/st0 *

There are probably lots of options you should add to that basic syntax, to
prevent backing up the /proc directory, and/or any CD-ROM drives you may
have mounted, etc...  I'm sure someone else would be able to elaborate the
tar command (and/or CPIO) - since tar is used for nearly everything (not
just SCSI tape backups)

When the SCSI driver loads (via module or directly in the kernel), it
should display a summary of devices on each SCSI id - including your tape
drive. 

If your tape drive has an auto-changer, you may have to enable probing
SCSI LUNs in the hardware configuration for the auto-changer to be
detected. 

From what I have read, amanda does seem to be a very popular tape backup
program - although it is designed for backing up entire networks (rather
than one PC).   amanda also supports "auto-changers", if you configure it
to.   I have never set up amanda, but at first glance it looked a bit
involved.   It's probably not as bad as it looks. 

On Tue, 29 Aug 2000, Mike Glaser wrote:

> This is my first attempt at using a tape backup on a Linux/UNIX system and I 
> am in need of some help. I am faced with having to take whatever I can find 
> out of a box of of old equipment and find a tape backup solution where I work.
> 
> I have searched through all of the Linux HOW-TOs that I could find and 
> haven't come up with anything.
> 
> Here's exactly where I am at...
> Have one one (apparently working) BusLogic BT-946C PCI SCSI card. I have 
> found this card on RedHat's list of Tier 1 supported SCSI adapters.
> 
> I have one HP internal DDS2 tape drive with part number C1539-69201. I 
> haven't found the common name for it yet. I also have one HP external 
> SureStore Tape 6000 drive. I only need one of these to work. I thought I would 
> go with the internal unit as that is known to be functional and more 'out-of-the-
> way'
> 
> I installed the SCSI card into a Mandrake 7.0 system I am going to use for 
> testing purposes. Kudzu found the new hardware and correctly identified it 
> and configured it. I then rebooted with the internal drive connected to the 
> SCSI card and the system booted normally without any mention of new 
> hardware. I am not sure if it should have 'discovered' the drive or not.
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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?
> 
> 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.
> 
> Thank-you,
> Mike Glaser
> 
> 
> 
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