Re: Quick Multiple Tape Question
On Tuesday 22 October 2002 18:04, Chad Morland wrote: I am trying to backup a 100G file onto tape. I am wondering if I can use amanda for this. Will it span the archive across more than one tape? I am using a DLT 7000 drive. If not, what are you recommendations? Yikes! For that, you will have to locate a drive and tape format that will hold it in one tape. Or, you have to use a split/join utility to break it up into tapable sized pieces that are each an independant file to the filesystem. Amanda cannot span one file across more than one tape, and because of the potentials for a disaster in such things as re-ordering the tapes on recovery, or any one of the other things that Mr. Murphy is famous for, it isn't likely that amanda ever will have that ability programmed in. -- Cheers, Gene AMD K6-III500mhz 320M Athlon1600XP1400mhz 512M 99.18% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly I find that very strange considering that tar, dump and several other backup utilities support this. Amanda developers don't want to add this just for the sake of having it? I know I am not the only one that can find this feature useful. I can keep track of my tapes, and I'm sure it is not a difficult task for someone who can install, configure and use Amanda to do the same. Are there any other concrete and real issues for not including this feature other than operator misuse? -CM
Re: Quick Multiple Tape Question
Some OSs like AIX can span tapes using their version of tar by manually asking to mount another volume... I am not sure if you need to do this on a regular basis or just as a one time deal. If one time deal and you have the avail disk space use split to break it into as many pieces as you need and cat or join to bring it back together when you need to restore. Or you can get a tape drive like the M2 drives from exabyte that handle 60GB native 150GB compressed (varies depending on type of data). Is this database data or text files? or what? --- Chad Morland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am trying to backup a 100G file onto tape. I am wondering if I can use amanda for this. Will it span the archive across more than one tape? I am using a DLT 7000 drive. If not, what are you recommendations? -CM __ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/
Re: Quick Multiple Tape Question
On Wed, 23 Oct 2002 at 11:03am, Chad Morland wrote On Tuesday 22 October 2002 18:04, Chad Morland wrote: I am trying to backup a 100G file onto tape. I am wondering if I can use amanda for this. Will it span the archive across more than one tape? I am using a DLT 7000 drive. If not, what are you recommendations? Yikes! For that, you will have to locate a drive and tape format that will hold it in one tape. Or, you have to use a split/join utility to break it up into tapable sized pieces that are each an independant file to the filesystem. *snip* I find that very strange considering that tar, dump and several other backup utilities support this. Amanda developers don't want to add this Err, *can* dump/tar span a single *file* across tapes? I'm not sure. A single filesystem -- sure. But a file? just for the sake of having it? I know I am not the only one that can find this feature useful. I can keep track of my tapes, and I'm sure it is not a difficult task for someone who can install, configure and use Amanda to do the same. Are there any other concrete and real issues for not including this feature other than operator misuse? Time. Spanning support has been in the planning stages for a long time. But the core AMANDA developers work very hard on lots of things that aren't AMANDA. If you'd like to get in touch with them and start coding, the contributions would be welcome. If you're talking about a *filesystem* rather than a file, then AMANDA can handle that easily via multiple disk list entries using tar. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University
Re: Quick Multiple Tape Question
I find that very strange considering that tar, dump and several other backup utilities support this. Amanda developers don't want to add this Err, *can* dump/tar span a single *file* across tapes? I'm not sure. A single filesystem -- sure. But a file? From the GNU tar manpage: Use --multi-volume (-M) on the command line, and then tar will, when it reaches the end of the tape, prompt for another tape, and continue the archive. Each tape will have an independent archive, and can be read without needing the other. (As an exception to this, the *file* that tar was archiving when it ran out of tape will usually be split between the two archives.. When I generate a table of context for my tape it shows that the file has been continued from X byte so it seems as if it is working. Time. Spanning support has been in the planning stages for a long time. But the core AMANDA developers work very hard on lots of things that aren't AMANDA. If you'd like to get in touch with them and start coding, the contributions would be welcome. If you're talking about a *filesystem* rather than a file, then AMANDA can handle that easily via multiple disk list entries using tar. -- Joshua Baker-LePain Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University Thanks for the clear answer... it's alot easier to stomache that they don't have the time rather than the desire. Perhaps I can contribute to this project and finally give back to the world! ;-) -CM
RE: Quick Multiple Tape Question
Amanda cannot span one file across more than one tape, and because of the potentials for a disaster in such things as re-ordering the tapes on recovery, or any one of the other things that Mr. Murphy is famous for, it isn't likely that amanda ever will have that ability programmed in. Thats a shame, I've persisted using amanda as it has all the features I want except for this one. I had hoped that this functionality would appear soon. I always thought that one of the best features of Amanda was its ability to enforce correct tape usage, therefore I can't see why that should be a big issue. This is the one thing that is stopping me consolidating all my unix/linux backups onto amanda. I know you can split one partition into smaller sections using options to tar, but given the way the filesystem changes frequently I'm not happy to trust this (its easier and safer to stick with ufsdump) BMRB International http://www.bmrb.co.uk +44 (0)20 8566 5000 This message (and any attachment) is intended only for the recipient and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. If you have received this in error, please contact the sender and delete this message immediately. Disclosure, copying or other action taken in respect of this email or in reliance on it is prohibited. BMRB International Limited accepts no liability in relation to any personal emails, or content of any email which does not directly relate to our business.
Re: Quick Multiple Tape Question
[ On Wednesday, October 23, 2002 at 11:31:20 (-0400), Joshua Baker-LePain wrote: ] Subject: Re: Quick Multiple Tape Question Err, *can* dump/tar span a single *file* across tapes? I'm not sure. A single filesystem -- sure. But a file? Yes, with dump you should be able to put large files on multiple tape volumes. Most versions of dump/restore can handle multiple volumes (and they always could), and they shouldn't care if a file spans multiple volumes, though it's been some time since I really tested this ability in any implementation. However most versions of tar/pax/cpio/afio should _not_ allow you to span multiple tapes with a single file. The formal definitions of ustar, cpio, and now pax archive formats do not allow for multiple volume support. There are some proprietary formats (maybe even GNU Tar's) which might allow spanning a file across multiple tapes. The issue is that there really must be a header on the second and following tapes, and normally in the tar/ustar/pax/cpio formats a header always starts a new file. So in order to use tar/pax/cpio/afio to archive files larger than a single tape you either have to split large file first into just slightly smaller than tape-sized chunks, or you have to create the archive on disk, then split it into just less than tape-sized chunks and either write each chunk to tape and very very very very carefully label the tapes so that you can read the archive back in in the right order, or then subsquently again use a version of pax or tar or cpio which does support multiple volumes to put the archive chunks onto multiple tapes. -- Greg A. Woods +1 416 218-0098;[EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Planix, Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Quick Multiple Tape Question
On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 11:53:08AM -0400, Chad Morland wrote: I find that very strange considering that tar, dump and several other backup utilities support this. Amanda developers don't want to add this Err, *can* dump/tar span a single *file* across tapes? I'm not sure. A single filesystem -- sure. But a file? From the GNU tar manpage: Use --multi-volume (-M) on the command line, and then tar will, when it reaches the end of the tape, prompt for another tape, and continue the archive. Each tape will have an independent archive, and can be read without needing the other. (As an exception to this, the *file* that tar was archiving when it ran out of tape will usually be split between the two archives.. In a discussion of whether tar/dump/... can handle multiple volumes you forget one thing, generally those programs are not handling the tape themselves in an amanda backup. The dump has been made to a file with an amanda header and then transfered to the tape. Even when going directly to the tape, the dumps are generally going through other programs like gzip and the indexer and ??? They are not writing to the tape itself. From long ago discussion I recall that one of the biggest problems those that looked into multi-volume dumps was determining just exactly what part of the dump file actually made it successfully onto the tape. -- Jon H. LaBadie [EMAIL PROTECTED] JG Computing 4455 Province Line Road(609) 252-0159 Princeton, NJ 08540-4322 (609) 683-7220 (fax)
Quick Multiple Tape Question
I am trying to backup a 100G file onto tape. I am wondering if I can use amanda for this. Will it span the archive across more than one tape? I am using a DLT 7000 drive. If not, what are you recommendations? -CM
Re: Quick Multiple Tape Question
On Tuesday 22 October 2002 18:04, Chad Morland wrote: I am trying to backup a 100G file onto tape. I am wondering if I can use amanda for this. Will it span the archive across more than one tape? I am using a DLT 7000 drive. If not, what are you recommendations? Yikes! For that, you will have to locate a drive and tape format that will hold it in one tape. Or, you have to use a split/join utility to break it up into tapable sized pieces that are each an independant file to the filesystem. Amanda cannot span one file across more than one tape, and because of the potentials for a disaster in such things as re-ordering the tapes on recovery, or any one of the other things that Mr. Murphy is famous for, it isn't likely that amanda ever will have that ability programmed in. -- Cheers, Gene AMD K6-III500mhz 320M Athlon1600XP1400mhz 512M 99.18% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
