Marcel Landman (mlandman@timing.ltd.uk)
Thu, 04 Nov 1999 01:57:18 +0000
Asaf Gery wrote:
>
> Hello you all,
> I have read the archives of this list and managed to get my
> backup tape running, using several insmod(s).
Yes, you would need to insmod paride, epat and pt, in that order. If
you already heard the tape drive moter running, chances are, you are
in business.
> However, I still did not understand how do I actually backup.
> How do I rewind, format and erase the tape?
create a backup:
tar cf /dev/pt0 DIRECTORY_YOU_WANT_TO_BACKUP
I am not sure you need to format the tape. I didn't, but then they were
pre-formatted. You can check whether everything went ok with
tar df /dev/pt0 (note that you will get messages 'file does not exist'
if you execute this command in the wrong directory.)
As far as erasing is concerned, I always simply overwrite the existing
tape,
but if you want to wipe sensitive data, you could do something like:
dd -if=/dev/zero -of=/dev/pt0
I have tried it, but never let it run to the end of the tape, due to
a lack of patience. However, doing a listing shows that the tar is no
longer there:
tar tf /dev/pt0
DISCLAIMER: I give _no_ garantuee that this will erase all data
properly.
> I believe that tar should be used in order to create the backup archive
> (am I right?).
Most people use tar, as do I. There are also dump, cpio, dd, afio.
>I tried using mtools (did not success), I also tried ftape
> (it was written somewhere that it supports parallel as well) also with no
> success.
The ftape documentation (Chapter 7) gives some good ideas how to use tar
for backup.
-Marcel
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Wed 03 Nov 1999 - 20:52:30 EST