When you want to extract tapes from a tape WITHOUT using amanda how do you know which file a particular archive is located?
I print out a postscript label, generated by amreport, and store it in the tapecasette. Some people use "amtoc" to generated a listing. And there is the (slower) command "amrestore ConFig NoSuchHost", or even a loop in shell using only dd and mt. Scanning the headers does not take as long as reading the complete tape.
Wouldnt it be a good idea to have a "table of content" located in the second BLOCk?
Some people (like Gene) write the necessary index and tools as the last file on tape. Amanda leaves the tape positioned at the end, just for just purposes.
Ie: when amanda starts writing it writes a zero filled 32k block to the second file and when its finshed doing all the work put a file in there containing
archive_name1 directory1 FILEMARK1 archive_name2 directory2 FILEMARK2 archive_name3 directory3 FILEMARK3
This way you would only need to look up the block and could blindly restore JUST by looking at the content of the seocnd block.
Partitioning a tape is not done with standard commands.
Many tapedrives are not able to: if you write using the standard open/write/close then everything after the last close in the tape is gone, because the close also writes an end of data mark.
Writing to a QIC-tape e.g. is done in a long serpentine, where, when hitting the end of the tape the tape is reversed, and the writing head is repositioned to write the data between the tracks of the first pass, up to 4 or 8 passes hence and forth over the tape. When writing the first pass, there is an erase head that erases the complete width of the tape.
Maybe it is because I've seen too many bad things happen with tapes and tapedrives, but I would not feel comfortable knowing the tape is rewound and written to somewhere in the beginning, and then hope the rest of the tape (with *ALL* the backups) are not affected.
-- Paul Bijnens, Xplanation Tel +32 16 397.511 Technologielaan 21 bus 2, B-3001 Leuven, BELGIUM Fax +32 16 397.512 http://www.xplanation.com/ email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *********************************************************************** * I think I've got the hang of it now: exit, ^D, ^C, ^\, ^Z, ^Q, F6, * * quit, ZZ, :q, :q!, M-Z, ^X^C, logoff, logout, close, bye, /bye, * * stop, end, F3, ~., ^]c, +++ ATH, disconnect, halt, abort, hangup, * * PF4, F20, ^X^X, :D::D, KJOB, F14-f-e, F8-e, kill -1 $$, shutdown, * * kill -9 1, Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Del, AltGr-NumLock, Stop-A, ... * * ... "Are you sure?" ... YES ... Phew ... I'm out * ***********************************************************************
