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Old 07-13-2001, 07:12 AM   #1
bfloeagle
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Question SCSI Tape Backup


Has anyone ever been able to get a SCSI tape drive working in Linux? If so, what drive and do you have any documentation on it?

Are there any GUI tape backup programs for X?

Thanx!
Andy

Last edited by bfloeagle; 07-13-2001 at 07:14 AM.
 
Old 07-13-2001, 07:38 AM   #2
jharris
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I've always used mine with good old tar...
Code:
tar cvf /dev/st0 /someDir
... Not sure about the graphical utils. To get it working I just hooked it up, and rebooted with a kernel that has SCSI tape support.

HTH

Jamie...
 
Old 07-13-2001, 10:05 AM   #3
cinnix
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check out http://freshmeat.net/projects/kdat/ I never tried it but I seen it on freshmeat.

Last edited by cinnix; 07-13-2001 at 10:13 AM.
 
Old 07-13-2001, 11:26 AM   #4
bfloeagle
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Gnome???

Know of a gnome version?

(Tried installing it and it tells me it wants KDE installed (even though it is). Dont want to mess with it out of fear of destroying my system....)

Andy
 
Old 09-06-2001, 03:53 PM   #5
drauh
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Hmm. I just hooked up an Adaptec 29160, and a Sony SDX-D500C AIT2 SCSI tape drive to a RH 7.1 box. The card driver seemed to be loaded by kudzu automatically, and the KDE list of devices shows the tape drive. But when I try the obvious:

# tar cvf /dev/st0 linux_22
linux_22/
linux_22/mapleibm.tar
tar: /dev/st0: Wrote only 0 of 10240 bytes
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

The tape drive, however, does seem to spin up. Anything else I could be missing?

Thanks.

Appendix on the card and tape drive install:
In both cases, once I turned the machine on again after installation, the card/device was configured automagically.

Last edited by drauh; 09-07-2001 at 12:46 PM.
 
Old 09-06-2001, 09:15 PM   #6
Gavin
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I'm running SUSE 7.0.

All I needed to do was install the SCSI card for the tape drive to work. I have Adaptec 29160N and a travan tape drive.
I did this by adding module aic7xxx to "INITRD_MODULES = " in the rc.config file.
Then run commands
>mk_initrd
>lilo
and reboot
test tape using "mt -f /dev/st0 retension/rewind/erase/etc"

Akeria backup is a good program and has a GUI interface for windows for remote control as well as linux graphical interface.

Gavin
 
Old 09-07-2001, 10:33 AM   #7
drauh
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Very odd: I couldn't find rc.config and mk_initrd
on RedHat 7.1 (maybe it uses something else?). Anyway, I tried:

# mt -f /dev/st0 retension
/dev/st0: Input/output error

OK. So, I get no further. What to do? What the
hell, I'll re-issue the commandline:

# mt -f /dev/st0 retension

and it works! I hear the tape drive going, and
the tape running. And mt returns 0.


Anyway, thanks for the lead on Arkeia. I checked
it out, but the free version won't serve my needs:
I have one server and 6 client machines that need
to be backed up. I'm going to give Amanda a shot,
though I don't think it has a GUI.

Cheers,
--Dave
:smash:
 
Old 09-07-2001, 12:43 PM   #8
drauh
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Ah, success! I was finally able to tar to tape:

# tar cf /dev/nst0
# mt -f /dev/st0 rewind
# tar tvf /dev/nst0[listing produced]

Now, are there docs about what nst0, st0, etc. mean?

Cheers,
--Dave
 
Old 09-07-2001, 05:13 PM   #9
bankrupt
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I have been having the same exact problems that you described. Running RH7.1 Kernel 2.4.2-2 with Adaptec 29160 SCSI and 2 DLT8000 tape drives in a Qualstar TLS. What did you do to fix it?

As far as the /dev/st0 and /dev/nst0, they are rewinding and non-rewinding respectively.

If you are using amanda you will not need the nst0 from what I understand.

Bankrupt
 
Old 09-07-2001, 05:58 PM   #10
drauh
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I didn't do anything to fix the problems: they just seemed to go away. My postings above describe exactly what happened:

1. I shutdown, plug SCSI card in.
2. Boot. Watch Kudzu detect the card and install the driver correctly (I assume).
3. Shutdown, plug tape drive in. (No tape loaded.)
4. Boot. No special messages about tape drive during startup sequence that I remember. But KDE's "device manager" shows the tape drive on the SCSI bus with correct SCSI ID and model.
5. Load tape. Try "tar cvf /dev/nst0 /random_dir". Saw "busy" light on drive go on. After 2 secs, tar returned with IO error, 0 bytes of nnnn bytes written.
6. Scratch head. Try "mt -f /dev/st0 retension". IO error, again. Wait 20 secs. WTF, I'll try it again. "mt -f /dev/st0 retension". WTF, it works, this time: I hear tape drive winding.
7. Try tarring a directory to /dev/nst0. It works. Try "tar tvf /dev/nst0", and it also works. Try "mt -f /dev/st0 erase": takes an age and a half, but it works.
8. Reboot with tape loaded. This time, there is a message from the SCSI card BIOS that it detected the tape drive. (This message may have been there before (with drive empty), but I just wasn't looking at the screen.)

So, there you go. I don't think I did anything. It just seemed to resolve itself. I know this is a Unix, but maybe a reboot or something may help?

Good luck.
--Dave
 
Old 02-07-2005, 08:13 AM   #11
besiz
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first of all try to issue a command cat /proc/scsi/scsi
if you get the line that says attached scsi ...............
than you know that your scsi tape drive is attached.
next step is install kdeadmin package.
run kdat
go to config preferences on kdat
change device from /dev/tape to /dev/st0
save config
and mount the tape from kdat
write back tell me if it did work
dragon
 
Old 02-07-2005, 08:31 AM   #12
bfloeagle
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Not bad... 3.5 year response time... We're moving up!!!
 
Old 02-07-2005, 12:48 PM   #13
drauh
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yeah. well, it fixed itself, as i said. i've been using amanda to backup to scsi tape for the last, oh, 3.5 years.
 
  


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