Questions tagged [tape]
Questions about tape drives, robots, & media. Includes LTO, DAT, etc. Also consider tags such as /backup or for the backup system(s) you're using (/bacula, /amanda, /tar, etc.)
71
questions
1
vote
0
answers
109
views
Extract a list of files from tape with tar
My goal is to extract only the files in a list from an lto5 tape using tar. The data was originally written to the tape using tar as well. I am able to accomplish this task from a .tgz file by doing:
...
- 23
1
vote
0
answers
193
views
Alternatives to compressed tarballs
I am reading/writing data from/to tapes using Debian and recently ran into an issue where I needed to figure out the size of the stored data stream, i.e. the data actually written to the tape (see ...
- 279
2
votes
1
answer
210
views
Read file size from tape
I have a tape with a .tar.lzma archive written to it. How can I determine the size of the .tar.lzma archived as is? In other words, I'm looking to find the size of the compressed archive, not the size ...
- 279
0
votes
1
answer
150
views
HP 1/8 G2 medium changer not detected in Oracle Linux 8
I have a HP 1x8 G2 Autoloader that connected to a SAN switch, on my VMware environment I have an Oracle Linux that should work with the tape.
The problem is after connecting tape to VM, medium changer ...
7
votes
1
answer
752
views
Tape readable with scsitape but not dd or tar, why?
I just installed an Exabyte tape drive:
$ lsscsi -g
[11:0:0:0] process Marvell 91xx Config 1.01 - /dev/sg0
[12:0:1:0] cd/dvd TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-3401TA 0283 /dev/sr0 /dev/sg1
[...
- 1,133
1
vote
0
answers
59
views
What is the simplest way to send data to a tape library?
I am looking for the simplest (feasible) way to push data away on a tape library. This is for archiving finalized, immutable datasets that only need to be retrieved in case of a catastrophic failure ...
- 243
1
vote
0
answers
207
views
Monitoring the activity of tape drive with SCSI generic driver (sg)
I would like to monitor statistics (transfer rate, byte/sec) for each LTO tape drive connected to Linux system. I understand that tapestat command can exactly do this, but this shows the activity of ...
- 136
1
vote
1
answer
153
views
Using Linux to read DDS-2 tape written under Solaris
I'm dealing with a couple of DDS-2 tapes, the owner of which says they were written long ago on a Solaris workstation, but I'm trying to read them in a Linux environment, since with other tapes I've ...
- 183
1
vote
1
answer
687
views
How can I use par2 to mimick the parity of RAID arrays?
Background:
I'm using LTO-8 tapes and my concern is that over time, the data on the tape can become corrupted and the goal that I am trying to accomplish is to use par2 to create the parity that I may ...
- 91
1
vote
0
answers
144
views
find out how many (posix) tar header blocks a file will require
Posix (pax) tar uses extended headers to allow long filenames etc..
Is there a way to find out how many 512 byte blocks will be used for the header for a particular file (before actually running the ...
- 207
2
votes
2
answers
361
views
End of tape detection (ENOSPC) in tar multi-volume mode with pipes for encryption
Using tar in multi-volume mode relies on a ENOSPC error to detect the end of the first tape and prompt the user for the next tape.
To simulate this behaviour consider the following example by writing ...
- 123
2
votes
1
answer
869
views
Testing LTO drive with mt and dd
Here are my commands
mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
dd if=/dev/st0 of=-
As I understand it the first command rewinds my tape in /dev/st0, and the second command writes contents of /dev/st0 to -. My questions ...
2
votes
2
answers
709
views
Using Tandberg LTO5 and Debian 10 Buster
I use
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="10"
VERSION="10 (buster)"
VERSION_CODENAME=buster
ID=debian
With an own ...
- 21
2
votes
1
answer
620
views
How do you determine the remaning capacity of a magnetic tape with mt or tar? How much space is in a block?
I am currently trying to back up data onto an LTO-4 tape using mt-st
and gnu tar 1.32, but I want to make sure I stop trying to copy things before the tape runs out! LTO-4 nominally has a capacity of ...
- 232
0
votes
2
answers
449
views
Very low read speed from LTO6 tape in Linux CentOS
Dear technical experts,
For a number of weeks now I've been trying to extract data from an LTO6 tape without having too much success on the speed department.
I'm using 'dd' to dump the tape content ...
- 11
2
votes
1
answer
414
views
Write tar archive to tape and then extract individual files
I would like to write a tar archive to tape, and at the same time store the block offsets for each file in a lookup table. Then when I want to restore an individual file from the archive, I would seek ...
- 207
1
vote
1
answer
127
views
Can I write the same tar archive to two tapes at once?
Is it possible to simultaneously write a tar archive to two tape drives using a single command, by directing the same output to both drives?
I want to save time by performing the operation in ...
- 207
1
vote
1
answer
221
views
Use disk like tape
We are building a data archiving system where we want to have the option to store redundant copies of data on different storage types: tape/disk/cloud, and also with the option of using different ...
- 207
5
votes
2
answers
1k
views
How do I write sequentially several tar's to a tape?
I am trying to write several directories to a tape. Each directory with one tar command.
So I have the following sample file/directory structure:
user@host1:~/temp/original % find .
.
./foo1
./foo1/...
- 589
0
votes
0
answers
261
views
How can I know how many files are stored in a tape?
I have installed an SCSI DDS4 tape drive and I have read:
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/el_GR.ISO8859-7/books/handbook/backups-tapebackups.html
and
https://docs.freebsd.org/doc/2.1.5-RELEASE/usr/...
- 589
0
votes
1
answer
81
views
Anyone with information on tape format used with early SunOS2.0 or how to get the data out
Having located, downloaded the .tgz and uncompressed it, I am now faced with three directories tape1,tape2, and tape3 with 10 or numbered bits.
Using
od -c
and
vi :%!xxd
did not produce anything ...
1
vote
2
answers
2k
views
Simple tools to read/write tapes on Linux
I have some tape drives and decided to back my data to tape (one of the reasons is that most of my data is not changing, so once I do a full backup, the tapes will have better chance of working after ...
- 333
1
vote
1
answer
257
views
Determine capacity of tape drive
Is there a way via mtx or mt, or else via some value stored in /sys or /proc, to know the capacity of a tape in a tape drive (such as a LTO7 cassette in a DELL TL4000)?
I have attempted mt with the ...
- 707
3
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Read the chip data from LTO tapes
The Wikipedia LTO article says that every LTO drive can read out the memory chip of a tape via 13.56 MHz NFC.
I expect here to find serial numbers, tape properties and usage data. How can I read this ...
- 3,786
0
votes
1
answer
117
views
Why use tape for restoring AIX mksysb instead of other ordinary drive devices?
I'm intrigued by the fact that the only way to restore a mksysb backup on AIX Unix systems can be done either by using a NIM server or by manually using a tape.
Why is it that you cannot replace the ...
- 108
2
votes
1
answer
366
views
Are there some common ways to catalogue tar tape backups?
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 ...
- 410
1
vote
1
answer
798
views
How to turn off tape (mt-st) compression on Ubuntu 18.04?
A recent upgrade from 14.04 to 18.04 on a host with with a LTO-6 tape drive shows the mt command no longer supports the compression argument. Anyone know another way to toggle drive compression?
# ...
- 547
2
votes
1
answer
385
views
Can I create a tape backup that uses Microsoft Tape Format (MTF) on Linux?
Outside of LTFS, the Microsoft Tape Format seems to be the closest to a widely supported format when it comes to older tape format that don't support LTFS (In my case, Ultrium 3 and 4).
However, ...
- 410
0
votes
2
answers
210
views
dd command - can it show record size when reading from tape
I have data on tape with a variable block size. when reading these tapes I can use tcopy /dev/st0 (for example) to show the record size as it reads from tape.
Ultimately I copy the data from tape ...
1
vote
1
answer
138
views
How to terminate old IBM internal DDS-3 tape drive?
I'm having some difficulty getting an old DDS-3 tape reader working on my Linux workstation. Some details:
From the product code that is printed on the label (E30364) I managed to identify the tape ...
- 221
1
vote
2
answers
2k
views
What is a safe way to dump data from a tape drive when you are not completely certain what is inside?
I have an old tape drive and old tape that I recently found. I was able to get the tape drive connected to Linux and executed the following commands:
mt -f /dev/nst0 rewind
dd if=/dev/nst0 of=dump....
- 253
0
votes
1
answer
397
views
How to backup on LTO-5 tapes in a gigabit network without shoe-shining?
I have equipped myself with an LTO-5 tape drive, and some tapes to avoid data loss, having previously relied on RAID.
However, I realise that even a gigabit Ethernet is not fast enough to drive an ...
- 113
2
votes
0
answers
1k
views
Question about blocks sizes on Tape vs. Tar
I have an HP LTO-4 drive that I've been using for backups for a while now and everything works very well, but I have a question on how the Tar blocking factor works and what is actually written to ...
- 75
2
votes
1
answer
295
views
SCSI LTO4 very slow on CentOS 7
I've replaced my backup server and I switched from a Debian Stretch to a CentOS7. I have a SuperLoader 3 LTO4 SCSI on an old adaptec SCSI 160. At first, I had to use the CentOSplus kernel which add ...
- 78
0
votes
1
answer
445
views
mtx reverses the numbers given to tape drives by CentOS and scsi generic (sg) devices
we have some confusion when we run mtx commands to load a tape from an autoloader slot to tape drive. we have two LTO-5 tape drives connected to our backup server. They are recognized by the ...
- 367
4
votes
1
answer
1k
views
My LTO tape drive is slow and “shoe-shines” on FreeBSD
Regardless of what data I write to my LTO-4 tape drive /dev/nsa0, writing is very slow (less than 1 MB/s) and the tape is constantly being wound back and forth in a shoe-shine pattern. No speed ...
- 755
0
votes
0
answers
551
views
Linux: create multivolume tape encrypted with ssl..is possible?
I want to backup my data on tapes.
I had a Ultrium LTO6
Make an encrypted backup with SINGLE tape works fine
tar cpMf - /home/ | openssl enc -e -aes128 -salt -pass file:file.password |(pv -p --...
- 11.9k
2
votes
2
answers
895
views
How can I read and extract information from a DDS-1 tape today?
I have a DDS-1 tape (Sony 60M 1.3 GB tape) and am hoping to find a tape drive where I can still read it. The problem is that while I can find the associated compatible tape drives online, I am not ...
- 253
1
vote
1
answer
222
views
Why "cfgadm" does not show "med-changer" device of SAS attached tape-library?
Trying to set up a tape library NEOs StorageLoader LTO7 and also old PowerVault 124T I am facing following problem and cannot find any helpful answer.
Using either Openindiana 151a8, Openindiana ...
- 131
5
votes
1
answer
374
views
Problems reading IBM 3592 JB tape
I'm having problems reading a 3592 JB IBM (700GB) tape using a TS1140 (E07) drive. The tape was written using a TS1130 (E06) drive with compression up to 1TB as specified on the label of the tape. ...
- 101
1
vote
1
answer
2k
views
How to install and configure HP LTO-5 External Tape Drive to RHEL Server
we just bought HP LTO-5 Ultrium 3000 SAS External Tape Drive with PCIe 3.0 SAS Host Bus Adapter to be installed on HP DL380p G9 RHEL Server for connectivity.
if we install the PCIe on the server and ...
- 11
3
votes
0
answers
298
views
Anyone know where to change this "bufsize" value? ( st / mt LTO tape drives )
I am trying to speed test some new LTO tape drives but cannot seem to send data to the tape via dd for any block size above 327,680 bytes. I must have a 1M blocksize for my application.
[root@host]# ...
- 31
11
votes
1
answer
6k
views
"Cannot allocate memory" when reading from SCSI tape
I am experimenting with some old SCSI tape drives, and I have successfully written some data to a tape, but I am struggling trying to read it back again.
# tar tvf /dev/st0
tar: /dev/st0: Cannot ...
- 6,378
2
votes
1
answer
419
views
Is my tape defective or there is another problem?
I tried a backup with this line
tar cvf - --format posix -b 1024 -X /home/user/altro/file.esclude /home/user | openssl aes-256-cbc -salt -k "pass" | dd bs=40M of=/dev/st0
The total size of my ...
- 11.9k
1
vote
1
answer
491
views
Why do I need to read from a tape 3 times to read 2 archives?
After writing two tar archives to a tape:
$ mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
$ tar cvf /dev/nst0 first
$ tar cvf /dev/nst0 second
Why do I need to read from the tape three times to read the two archives?
$ mt ...
- 245
5
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Linux tapes,what is l a and m at end of tape devices in dev?
I see those files on linux server
find /dev/*st*0*
Give me
/dev/nst0
/dev/nst0a
/dev/nst0l
/dev/nst0m
/dev/st0
/dev/st0a
/dev/st0l
/dev/st0m
I know n before st mean "no rewind"
but what does it ...
- 11.9k
5
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Save many small files to LTO Tape
I'm doing backups to LTO tape. Because my backups include a lot of small files, which slows down the read from disk.
I'm using the buffer command to prevent shoe-shining my tapes:
bkname="test"; ...
1
vote
2
answers
283
views
Backups on tape HP Ultrium 460
There's subj tape drive (LTO-2 tapes, SCSI connection) connected to Debian 8. And I can't understand if it can make "session" writes? And, if yes, how correctly it has to be done?
I mean, that I need ...
- 193
3
votes
2
answers
2k
views
How to determine size of tar archive without creating it?
I'm archiving a few directories every night to LTO-7 tape with about 100 or so large (2GB) files in each of them.
As a check that the data has been written correctly, I'm verifying that the number of ...
- 151
2
votes
1
answer
865
views
Faster (uncompressed) archiving tool than tar?
I'm using tar to archive a bunch of files to LTO-7 tape. Generally each file is about 1-2GB, and there can be several hundred of them in each archive (up to ~1TB per archive).
At the moment, I'm ...
- 151