You can read the tapes without amanda using just "dd" and a restore
program. You can get some hints by looking at the first part of a dump
image.
For example I will do these commands with one of my backup tapes.
First, I have to "mt fsf" to skip over the tape header, and then I can
use just "dd" command to read the image header which has the
instructions:
[root@masq1 ~]# mt fsf
[root@masq1 ~]# dd if=/dev/nht0 bs=32k count=1
AMANDA: FILE 20010503 shaman /mnt/raw lev 1 comp .gz program
/usr/local/etc/amanda/bin/tar
To restore, position tape at start of file and run:
dd if=<tape> bs=32k skip=1 | /bin/gzip -dc |
usr/local/etc/amanda/bin/tar -f... -
Maybe your backups were made with ufsdump or dump or some other program
than tar, but the dump header should tell you what to do. Also, if you
go to www.amanda.org and find your way to the amanda FAQ I think the
instructions are there, or if you download the source code and unpack
it, I think you can find them in some files in the docs directory.
Also, don't forget to always make sure that your tape is write-protected
when you are dealing with old backup tapes. I think this is just some
good practical advice for any kind of backup, and you could have big
trouble if you forget and someone else decides to use the tapedrive.
> PQ20 Yuval Ruttkai wrote:
> I am working in a company that their first backup was made before 4
> years by Amanda.
>
> There are old tapes that they want to see if they need the material.
>
> I need to install amanda just to watch the files that are in the tape.
>
> I have Sun Ultra 5 with Solaris 5.8.
>
> Do I need a special configuration to configure Amanda just to watch
> and read those tapes?
>
> Please try to help me as soon as you can.
--
"Jonathan F. Dill" ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
