SUMMARY: Re: can /sbin/dump span tapes?

From: Ed King (eking@exch.hamiltontn.gov)
Date: Thu Apr 11 2002 - 13:09:25 EDT


sincere thank-you's to...

Lavelle, Bryan <Bryan.Lavelle@COMPAQ.com>
Talawala, Murtaza <murtaza.talawala@digital.com>
<alan@nabeth.cxo.cpqcorp.net>
Cian O'Sullivan <Cian@logic.bm>
John Francini <francini@zk3.dec.com>
Shaukat Riaz <riaz_shaukat@hotmail.com>
[I apologize if I have left anyone out]

orginal question...

> We are running Tru64 4.0g and do our backups using /sbin/dump and the
media
> robot to a 4slot TLZ7L-DA dds2 changer. One of our file systems has
grown
> to be so big that it will not fit (compressed) on a single dds2 tape any
> longer.
>
> Can /sbin/dump span tapes, or is it time for us to upgrade to a dds4
drive?
> Is an HP SureStor 40 dds4 compatible with Tru64 4.0g?

summary of answers...

use vdump instead of dump, vdump is better. dump and vdump can span tapes,
but since they assume an interactive session, they will prompt an operator
to switch tapes. to perform the swap programatically, use an "expect"
script ( http://expect.nist.gov/ ) to listen for the tape change prompt,
then call the media robot utility to switch the tapes.

...or....

use amanda ( http://www.amanda.org/ ) to pump (via ethernet) the Alpha
backup to a high capacity drive on another machine

...or....

ditch the TLZ7 and upgrade to a modern, higher capacity drive. thats what
we ended up doing. bought a scsi cable with 50pin male on one end and
68pin male on other end, attached the HP C5687A 40gig drive to the Alpha,
updated the /etc/ddr.dbase file and removed the media robot commands from
the backup cron-script and voila!



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