thanks jason,
I understand. I recommend you pick up the book "unix backup and
restore". this book also has a HUGE section on amanda. This is the
same section online whose link can be found at http://www.amanda.org.
- i've been an o'reilly reader since '93. i have pretty much everything but
the "backup" book. since '93 i've always done backups "my way". everywhere
i worked before, i would just build a box with alot of drive space and put
it on the lan (backup server). then, i'd write scripts on that box and just
backup every other server across the lan and onto the drives on the backup
box. i would use "removable drives", then just pull drives out once a week
for offsite storage and rotate drives that way. i never had a problem with
that method, although, arguably, there are a number of things wrong with
that approach. i guess this tape-thing is the proper thing to do? ;-)
Soooo, Thinking about giving that dat drive away? I probably can manage
with one... :)
- :-) ...i'll think about it.. ;-)
Seriously, it depends. I assume both the new and old drives are scsi.
if you plug in the new drive onto the scsi chain with the old one,
/dev/[n]st0 will point to the drive with the lowest scsi id number.
/dev/[n]st1 will point the higher scsi device id.
- i'm able to read the drive (write to it, label it, ..etc.) using
/dev/nst0. i guess what i really can't figure out is how to get amcheck to
read the labels of all of the tapes in the magazine. currently, if i run an
'amcheck <conf>', i get "slot is empty" errors for all of the slots in the
magazine. i've tried numbering all the slots incrementally (i.e. slot0 =
/dev/nst0, slot1 = /dev/nst1, ..etc.) and i've also tried numbering all the
slots identically (i.e. slot0 = /dev/nst0, slot1 = /dev/nst0, ..etc.), but i
still can't get it working properly. i'm not sure i'm understanding that
part 100%. from my understanding, the only "drive" is /dev/nst0, so it
should always read/write from/to /dev/nst0. the thing i think i need to
figure out properly is the handling of the tape changing in the magazine,
and how 'amcheck' goes about reading the labels on each tape in the L200. i
know if i do an 'amtape <conf> eject' the changer will pull the current tape
out of the drive and load the next one in the magazine into the drive (i set
the changer to sequential access). however, whenever the changer comes
across a gap in the magazine, it won't load a tape in the drive. is there a
way to tell it to always "find" the next tape in the rotation and put it in
the drive?
If you replace the old drive entirely with the new one, (same id
perhaps), then /dev/[n]st0 will point for certain at the new drive.
- yeah, i built a new box entirely dedicated for this purpose instead of
using my workstation. i still have the dat drive on my box to backup my
personal stuff. ;-)
the bootup messages, messages logfile, and "dmesg" will show you what
device the kernel has assigned to your tape drives. Here's the output
from my dmesg command:
st: bufsize 32768, wrt 30720, max buffers 5, s/g segs 16.
Detected scsi tape st0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 4, lun 0
- yeah, dmesg does report to find a tape device on st0. it also defines two
devices in /proc/scsi/scsi, one is the actual dlt 7000 drive, and the other
is the "media-changer". i think i'm starting to understand this a little
better (id's 2 and 3 respectively). there's actually two devices being used
in the L200, one is the drive itself, and the other is the "elevator"
mechanism which handles the changing of the tapes to and from the dlt drive
itself. i think understanding this concept is giving me a better overall
picture. i didn't have any previous experience with these changer devices.
I would be tempted to put the new drive on the chain with the old one
and set its scsi device id higher than the old one. this way you can
still run backups on the old drive without changing your current
configuration. After that, build an entirely new amanda configuration
for the new drive.
- i'm probably going to put a seperate dat drive on the amanda server itself
eventually, then i can backup the servers across the lan with the dlt, then
the amanda box itself with the dat. i just haven't gotten that far yet.
;-)
Remember the value of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
- true, i'm still running the "basic backups" off of my PC for now. ;-)
> again, sorry this is so basic.
This is not basic. it is a relatively painless process, however.
After you install the new drive, spend some time testing it, including
scripts to change to different tapes, what device settings turn off and
on compression etc.
>
> does anyone else have an L200 that would possibly be willing to post their
> chg-multi settings (or not)?
the tapetype settings for your particular tape cartridges should be
pretty easy to find on the tapetype list in the faq-o-matic. I do hope
someone here has that tape drive type for controlling the more advanced
features of your drive.
- i found my tape-type at:
http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~sdossick/amanda/
> thanks in advance for any assistance.
You are welcome. I hope this helps...
- thanks again then!
-edwin
