So, I have a tape drive, and use it to permanently archive some stuff (old projects). These are "copy once" things, no versioning/incremental backups/etc. Though of course, new projects might be added to a tape later on.
I use tar for this (GNU tar 1.29 on Ubuntu 18.04):
tar --create --verbose --verbose --blocking-factor=128 --checkpoint=10000
--checkpoint-action="echo=[%{%F %T}t] [%s] #%u: %T" --format=posix
--label="`date -Iseconds`" --totals --multi-volume --file=/dev/nst0 <Folders to backup>
Since this leaves me with a bunch of tapes that I have to manually keep track of, I wonder if there are common tools to catalogue those tapes, and maybe even keep track of stuff like the blocking factor, etc.
I know I can manually run a tar --list into a file and keep notes, which is my current approach, but before I start off wrong, I figure I ask.
I am not looking at "big" programs like bacula/bareos and the like, mainly because I want to be able to restore with just the tape in hand and a brand new *NIX system. With tar, I know that I can just scan every tape to find what I need in an emergency. (But I'd like to avoid that, hence the question)
gtarusage sincegtaris known to reject follow up tapes from multi volume archives with a probability of ~ 5%. Also note that your command happily archives long pathnames that gnu tar later rejects to restore. Did you think about whether you really like to usegtarfor backups?tar --show-defaultssays it's using gnu format by default, which is documented to have incompatible extensions. I was hoping that by using POSIX.1-2001, I get a broad compatibility with different systems (while also supporting large files). Do you recommend something else that runs on Linux (and optionally, BSD)?starthat is recent inschilytools. If you like to verify thatgtardoes not support long pathnames, try to extract the filestar/testscripts/longpath.tar.bz2usingstarandgtar.stardoesn't support multi-volume archives in pax format - is that a limitation of the pax standard? The output (along with -block-number) is pretty good for my cataloging needs, so that's neat. experimenting with this command line for now:star -c artype=xstar -block-number blocks=128 file=/dev/st0 -fifo -fifostats fs=1g -multivol -time -v -v VOLHDR="``date -Iseconds``" <Folders>paxformat is strictly POSIX compliant and does not impmement extensions. For backups, I recommend the option-dumpthat switches to theexustarformat plus additional meta data. A blocksize of 128 is not supported by all hardware, 126 is recommended for best portability.-fifois the default since 30 years. Make sure to use at least release 1.6.1, since before there have been some hangs in the fifo on Linux.