Date: Sun, 03 Dec 2000 21:11:56 -0600 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: "Allan Dib" <dib.allan.l@edumail.vic.gov.au> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: tape drive commands Message-ID: <200012040311.eB43BuS08421@grumpy.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Message from "Allan Dib" <dib.allan.l@edumail.vic.gov.au> of "Mon, 04 Dec 2000 12:20:24 %2B1000." <00e001c05d98$c4cf8380$10354d0a@admin1>
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"Allan Dib" writes: > Hiya all, > > What commands are ther available for tape drives (especially backups) on a > FreeBSD 4.1.1 system. I have used "tar" but it hasn't been 100% successful. > I think I need to first format a tape. What commands are there to format > tapes / retension etc...\ % man mt Can't help much more as you don't really give us much to go on. Such as what kind of tape is it? Tape drive? Interface? Are you sure FreeBSD recognizes the device? If so, what device name did you try with tar? And what about tar was less than 100% successful? Was it 95%? Or 0%? And what are you trying to backup? User files? Or the whole enchilada? DDS (DAT), 8mm, and others, do not need or have a "format" required before their use. In addition to tar there are two other utilities commonly used for backup, dump and pax. If you want the best possible backup of your system then I recommend using dump from single user mode. In single user mode you'd do something like this: # mt -t /dev/nsa0 rewind # dump 0af /dev/nsa0 / # mount -ro /var # dump 0af /dev/nsa0 /var # mount -ro /usr # dump 0af /dev/nsa0 /usr ... Having a backup/dump of the entire system is nice to have. However a backup of /etc, /var, and /home, results in most all of the important stuff which is not on the CDROM. These filesystems (or directories) archive with tar very easily. A snapshot on a running system is usually perfectly satisfactory. But first you have to figure out what your other problem is. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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