Re: Checking a Sun L9 autoloader.

From: Michael Vilain (vilain_at_spamcop.net)
Date: 05/06/04 

Date: Thu, 06 May 2004 03:06:41 -0700

In article <c99d2c79.0405060030.1f5542c3@posting.google.com>,
 see_my_signature_for_my_real_address@hotmail.com (Dr. David Kirkby)
 wrote:

> I have a Sun L9 autoloader with DLT-8000 drive in it, and have finally
> got a real (not Sun I would add) HVD SCSI card. You may recall my
> earlier problems when the card I bought was SE, not HVD as I was led
> to belive.
>
> The HVD SCSI card is now reconsised at the OBP, along with the tape
> drive and the library on bus 6, devices 0 and 1. After a boot -r,
> cdrecord -scanbus can see the devices on the SCSI bus, so I assume
> that I'm at least 50% of the way to getting this working.
>
> However, much to my surprise, there is no /dev/rmt/1* files. I
> expected these, as my previous tape drive (DDS-4) produced the
> /dev/rmt/0* files.
>
> What is the quickest way to determine if the DLT-8000 is functional or
> not? I'm not bothered about the autochanger faciltiies, barcodes etc
> for now - I just want to verify the tape drive is working, preferably
> without installing a lot of other software. I don't care about
> performance issues for now.
>
> This is a home machine, so I can't afford Veritas. I know there are
> open-source solutions, but for now I just want to check the bare
> minimum of functionality. I know this device has been connected to SE
> SCSI cards on at least two occasions, so I'm not sure of its
> condition. It is however seen on the SCSI bus, which must be a good
> sign.
>
> I got the autoloader for nothing, as it was unused in a company. I
> don't know why it was unused - perhaps since it does not work. Hence
> I'm looking for a quick and dirty solution to check its functionality
> with ufsdump or tar.
>
> Dr. David Kirkby

You rebooted with

boot -r

right?

That will recreate the /dev and /devices files (there are other ways of
doing this, but this seems like it would be easiest for you).

Once the device files are setup, you should be able to put a DLT tape in
the drive and use ufsdump to the device file. Use the "u" device to get
the maximum compression:

ufsdump 0f /dev/rmt/0u

DO NOT use tar to backup your system. That's not it's job. It's a tape
ARCHIVER, not a filesystem dump utility. ufsdump/ufsrestore should do
you for now. Read the man pages on them. When you're ready, you can
use amanda (http://www.amanda.org) to automate your backups and run your
jukebox:

http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cxh/sapub/juke.html

http://mtx.badtux.net/

http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/~spb/stctl/

B.U.R.T. (Backup and Recovery Tool),
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~jmelski/burt/
Nice Tcl/tk front-end. Uses its own back-end engine.

Linux Backup (GTK-based),
http://www.linsupport.com/sw/linuxbackup.html

http://sunsite.dk/qweb/kdat/ Nice Qt/X11 front-end to tar.

Tob (Tape Oriented Backup). No longer maintained. Final version is
mirrored at http://linuxmafia.com/pub/linux/utilities-general/ Front-end
to tar or afio.

afbackup, Albert Flugel's Backup,
http://sourceforge.net/projects/afbackup/ Client/server backup
management system & engine. Can use mtx or stctl to control tape
changers.

hostdump.sh, http://www.backupcentral.com/hostdump.html Sophisticated
shell script. Will use dump, cpio, or tar, in that order of preference.

Kbackup, http://kbackup.sourceforge.net/ ncurses-driven (or
command-line) front-end to afio or tar.

Datbkr, http://www.psychosis.com/datbkr/ Fast, light script front-end
for tar.

star, ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix/star/ Highly optimised version of
tar. (Double-buffered FIFO streaming, does sophisticated diffs.)

Good informational site: http://www.backupcentral.com/ 

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