On Thursday 15 September 2005 09:11, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: >On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Jon LaBadie wrote: >> On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 07:42:36PM +0200, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: >> > On Tue, 13 Sep 2005, Matt Hyclak wrote: >> > > On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 03:41:34PM +0100, Rodrigo Ventura enlightened us: >> > > > tapecycle is the total number of tapes; only these tapes are >> > > > rotated, right? >> > > >> > > Not exactly. tapecycle is the minimum number of tapes that will be >> > > used before any single tape can be overwritten. Many people have a >> > > tapecycle less than the total number of tapes so that if a tape >> > > happens to go bad, it doesn't hold everything up waiting for a new >> > > one. >> > >> > Tapecycle is also the number of slots in the virtual tape changer if >> > you use vtapes. Actually that isn't completely correct neither, as I >> > found out amtape continues scanning after the last accessed tape, >> > but it refuses to scan for more than tapecycle tapes in one >> > invocation. >> > >> > I'd like to have tapecycle different from the number of slots in the >> > virtual tape changer, so I can move vtapes offline, like with a real >> > changer. Right now the workaround is to make the number of slots >> > equal to tapecycle, but this makes some assumptions I'd prefer not >> > to make. >> >> I presume this is a problem in the changer script, not amtape per se. >> What changer script do you use? Any script hackers want to tackle it? > >chg-disk > >Gr{oetje,eeting}s,
Geert; I've been running chg-disk for about a year, maybe longer. As you can see with ls, each virtual tape is nothing but a directory that is linked to as appropriate. There is nothing I can think of that would preclude the copying of a directory (and its associated index files) to one or more data dvd's in order to 'take a snapshot' for archival reasons. Or, if there is space available on the target drive, I assume it could be marked as no-reuse, and a new directory created and amlabeled in its place. In my case that would rapidly lead to my needing to get another interface card and add anoither large drive, so I haven't explored that path yet. I'm already using all 4 ide/atapi drives on the motherboard. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) 99.35% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.